Ivan Bartoš Reelected as Head of the Czech Pirate Party

Ivan Bartoš was re-elected chairman of the Czech Pirate Party by its national forum for another two years on Saturday, being supported by 662 of the 948 participants in the vote.

His challengers were economist Lukáš Wagenknecht, the co-founder of the auditing think-tank Good Governance, former acting chairwoman Jana Michailidu, who recently caused controversy by saying that she is a communist, and Ostrava city councilor David Witosz.

After the vote, Bartos thanked the Pirates for support and for their performance in last year’s general election.

He said the Pirates must set ambitious goals for themselves, focus on doing a good job in government as well as on making regional Pirate politicians more visible publicly.

Last October, elections were held in the Czech Republic leading to the fall of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš.

The center right coalition SPOLU composed of ODS, KDU-ČSL and TOP 09 finished first in these elections, closely followed by ANO, Babiš’s party. The Piratí-STAN coalition formed by the Mayor and Independents Party and the Pirates Party completed the podium.

SPOLU and Piratí-STAN reached an agreement to form a government coalition that would grant them a comfortable majority of 108 seats out of 200 in the lower house of the Czech parliament, the House of Deputies.

Petr Fiala, leader of ODS, was named Prime Minister by President Miloš Zeman.