There has been speculation about this for many years, but it only came to light before this year’s parliamentary elections. The Greens have joined forces with the Pirates and will be on their candidate lists. Why wasn’t it possible before and is it no longer a problem now? How has the Czech political scene changed over the last four years and what are the biggest problems we face in Prague’s municipal politics? In the new episode of Studio Alarm+, we talk about this with the Greens politician and Prague 3 representative Matěj Michalek Žaloudek.
How do you evaluate the pre-election memorandum on cooperation until the autumn elections? Is it a good step for you and are the conditions dignified?
It is probably relevant to describe my assessment of this cooperation that when we voted on it at the Council of the Republic, I was the person who abstained from voting. So I could probably represent that part of the Greens that saw it more critically and would prefer a different option.
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So you were not outright against it, but you abstained from voting?
There is actually not much difference between being against it and abstaining. But it seemed more appropriate to abstain to me. But that is marginality, in my opinion.
So why doesn’t this cooperation seem like an ideal idea to you?
The Greens are not running on all candidate lists in all regions. When I look at what the regional candidates look like, this is where things start to break down for me personally and I find it a little bit dignified. When I imagine a Green voter who lives in a region where they can’t find the Greens, I don’t know what advice I should give them. For me, this is a litmus test that the Pirate Party probably doesn’t even seriously intend to cooperate. Our voters often don’t even have the opportunity to vote for the people they want to vote for on this candidate list. It’s not that I find it primarily humiliating, or that I have any fundamental problems with the program. I think it’s potentially damaging in the future, also with regard to the possible future merging of entities on the center-left political spectrum. Our electorate doesn’t feel like they can circle whoever they want, or they won’t find a single green ticket in their mailbox, so in my opinion this setup won’t deliver the results that the Pirate Party promises.
So if there were a green candidate in every region, would the cooperation be okay for you?
Yes, this is where it breaks down, but the second problem is also in what positions the green candidates appear. Regions are one thing, but then here we have twelfth place for Gabriela Svárovská on the Prague candidate list. That is such a signal both internally and externally that I cannot evaluate positively and that raises questions even among people outside our party. And yet I think that it would not be necessary to do much for us to all go into the campaign together and joyfully.
