Hradec Králové senator: Čeralová Petrofová wins Czech Senate runoff

Zuzana Čeralová Petrofová, president of the piano maker Petrof, has been elected senator for the Hradec Králové district. In the Senate runoff, she took about 60 percent of the vote, while her rival, former minister Martin Dvořák, received about 40.

A week earlier, in the first round, the picture was the reverse: Dvořák won with 25.13 percent of the vote, with Čeralová Petrofová second on 21.94 percent. But early in this count it was already clear that she held the lead. When half of the votes had been counted the ratio stood at 60 to 40, and it barely changed until the end.

Compared with the first round, the new senator gained almost five thousand votes, while Dvořák lost about fifteen hundred. He failed to bring all of his earlier voters back to the polls and, it seems, did not win over new ones. The former minister and first post-November mayor of Hradec Králové was backed by the Hradec Democratic Club, the Pirates, TOP 09, the Greens, the Liberal-Environmental Party, Volt Česko and the “Soukromníci” (Private Entrepreneurs).

Čeralová Petrofová ran as an independent for ODS and KDU-ČSL. In the runoff she was also supported by most of her first-round rivals, among them outgoing senator Jan Holásek and regional deputy head Jana Hülková (ANO). SPD candidate Ivan Pícek also advised his supporters to vote for her, which caused fierce outrage on social media, especially after he accompanied the post with a joint photo.

How Čeralová Petrofová answered the criticism

The new senator stressed that she had not asked for such support. “I firmly reject any attempt to link my candidacy with the PRO party and Mr. Jindřich Rajchl,” she wrote on Facebook. According to her, last Saturday the PRO and Svobodní campaign headquarters ended up next to her own, and a Svobodní representative, Havrda, came to congratulate her on the first-round result. “In Hradec we all know each other, and shaking hands is ordinary human courtesy, not a political agreement,” she said.

Back in the summer, when announcing her candidacy, she said she wanted the voice of entrepreneurs who create value in the country to be heard more loudly in parliament and, where possible, to help solve regional problems in infrastructure, education and culture.

Čeralová Petrofová is 58 and a fifth-generation member of the Petrof family, traditional piano makers in Hradec Králové. In 1992 she graduated from the Faculty of Pharmacy of Charles University in Hradec Králové, joined Petrof’s advertising department in 2000 and became its commercial director a year later. She lives in Hvozdnice and is married to a doctor, and the couple have two children. Her honours include the title Manager of the Year 2014.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz