Rakušan on the Chamber of Deputies scandal and STAN’s election goals

STAN movement leader Vít Rakušan said in an interview that SPD MP Miroslav Ševčík’s remarks about Rakušan’s party colleague Michaela Šebelová show how coarse politics has become. In his words, this is not about a difference of views but about basic human decency. At the same time, the party is aiming to ensure that the current coalition loses its majority after the next elections.

The scandal over remarks about menopause

In recent days the lower house has been shaken by Ševčík’s comments about Šebelová. Rakušan sees them as a symptom that “politics has gone too far”: “We must not tolerate boorishness, either in the Chamber or outside it.” That is why, he said, STAN could not leave the attack unanswered.

Not only the opposition but also coalition MPs spoke out against Ševčík’s words about menopause, and Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (ANO) tried to obtain an apology from him. However, as Rakušan told it, the head of their parliamentary group and human rights commissioner Taťána Malá blocked putting an apology on the session’s agenda on behalf of ANO. Meanwhile, in a video response Ševčík opted not for a simple “sorry, I went too far” but for continued insults. Michaela Šebelová filed a complaint with the mandate and immunity committee on Friday; Rakušan could not say when the committee will take it up.

STAN’s goals after the elections

After the municipal and Senate elections, in which STAN won ten seats in the upper house and declared itself the winner, the party wants to change the government. There are three years until the elections to the Chamber of Deputies, so many intermediate stages lie ahead. The first is to conduct opposition work differently: a campaign of meetings and trips around the regions should reach the fifth of ANO voters who will wonder whether they are getting from Babiš and his government what they expected. Rakušan wants STAN to be the “architect” of a situation in which the current coalition does not have a majority in the Chamber.

STAN currently polls at around 18%. Asked whether that means a goal of 23% in the elections, Rakušan replied that he has always been modest in his estimates: he would like to hold a range of 15–20%. If the party breaks through 20% and ANO loses in the ratings, the balance of power will differ from the results of last year’s elections.

Does he want to be prime minister

STAN wants to become a “prime ministerial” party and prove its substantive competence. For that, Rakušan said, it has a shadow government, regional development concepts, its own tax policy, work on social policy and the development of a security concept. Whoever leads the party is automatically its candidate for prime minister: “I don’t see this as a personal ambition but as STAN’s ambition.” He heads the shadow cabinet, and at press conferences he is called the shadow prime minister.

Pressed that the program on the shadow government’s website would suit any party in the Chamber, he replied that STAN responds to the current cabinet’s actions every week. According to him, the party showed its economic competence in the debate on next year’s budget: MPs Věra Kovářová, Jan Papajanovský and Lucie Sedmihradská, together with experts, prepared a series of measures that could reduce the deficit by 54 billion crowns. The Babiš cabinet is proposing a budget with a deficit of 386 billion crowns.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz