Former Minister for Human Rights and Legislation and Senator Jiří Dienstbier will run for the chairmanship of Social Democracy (SOCDEM). He told the server Novinky.cz. Former Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Jana Maláčová also announced her candidacy earlier. The congress awaits the Social Democrats on Saturday. The current chairman, Michal Šmarda, has announced that he will not defend the position at the head of the party.
Dienstbier said he agrees with Maláčová on socioeconomic issues, such as affordable housing. However, they do not agree on a strategy to reach a solution. “I want to connect with parties like the Greens or the Future, she with the anti-establishment left or national conservative parties like Enough!,” Dienstbier told the website.
But Maláčová’s connection with the coalition was Enough! refuses. According to her, Dienstbier wants to continue Šmard’s policy. “And I think it can’t go on like this,” she told Novinkám.
Šmarda had previously said that SOCDEM should be led by someone with electoral success a year before the elections to the House of Representatives. He therefore approached the long-time hetman of the Pardubice region, Martin Netolicky, and the former hetman of the Hradec Králové region, the current mayor of Rokytnice in the Orlické mountains, Jiří Štěpán, with an invitation to candidacy. Both succeeded in the regional elections.
Last week, Netolický told ČTK that he was pleased by the trust of the current chairman, but that he wanted to focus on work in the region as a priority. Štěpán identified it as his priority to bring the situation after the regional elections, in his case in the Hradec Králové region, to a successful end.
After the lower house elections in 2021, the Social Democrats are out of the House. They did not do well in the June European elections either. In this year’s regional elections, SOCDEM lost 24 mandates and occupied 13 seats in regional councils.
