The dispute over who agreed and disagreed with what at the pension reform negotiations at Prague Castle culminated on Thursday in the announcement of the ANO movement that it would no longer negotiate with the government of Petr Fiala at all. “We wrote a very polite letter saying that we would no longer participate in this. We are not insulting anyone,” describes the development of the situation, deputy of the ANO movement Aleš Juchelka. The government criticizes the obstruction. “The entire coalition is ready to act,” says ODS vice-president Eva Decroix.
Prague
3:35 p.m April 26, 2024
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Representatives of the coalition and the opposition discussed the pension reform with the president Photo: Zuzana Jarolímková | Source: iROZHLAS.cz
“We are ready to act, even though various insults are repeatedly heard from the other side, or indications that it makes no sense,” declares Decroix. “YES says: ‘We will not deal with you’, but adds in the second sentence: ‘If we ever rule in the future, we will cancel everything you accept’. To me, it results more from an interest in one’s own political line.”
Is the government or the opposition to blame for the collapse of the pension reform negotiations? The deputy chairperson of the ODS, Eva Decroix, and the deputy of the ANO movement, Aleš Juchelka, are discussing
On the contrary, according to Juchelka, the opposition is trying, but the coalition is not interested in participating in the creation of proposals. “We met with Minister Jurečka (KDU-ČSL) twice. It was only after about a year and a half that we got our pension expert into his pension commission,” he describes.
“We’ve always been very honest about it. We went to the meetings, but we came across the fact that we were faced with a fait accompli and we had to react to it,” he adds.
But according to Eva Decroix, the representatives of the movement are bluffing. “The ANO movement has been talking passionately about some kind of pension reform for a year, but no one has seen it, no one has presented it,” he reminds. “I’m convinced that not only do they not have anything, but if they did have something, they definitely wouldn’t say it, because they wouldn’t be able to play the role of empty and sometimes really stupid critics.”
But Juchelka defends her side. “For the first wave, we submitted a number of different amendments in the Chamber of Deputies,” he recapitulates. “Through the amendments, we will also deal with the third one, which runs on April 30 for the government. And if circumstances permit, we would revise some parametric changes that harm the pension system.”
The castle published the minutes of the meeting on pensions, YES the increase in the threshold for retirement did not contradict
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According to him, the situation was particularly aggravated by the misinterpretation of the minutes of the meeting with the president. “We said that the record should be amended. It didn’t happen, we should have discussed it at the next meeting, which is what we expected,” presents the position of the ANO movement.
“We do not understand at all why the record was published. And why were there empty chairs in the photo when we apologized for the meeting in a letter to Mr. President.”
Declining political culture
The coalition perceives the situation differently. “We have known for ten years that the pension system needs to be changed. For a long time, the ANO movement was unable to present anything that would change the pension reform. They started negotiations and tried to be constructive. Returning from vacation, Babiš realized that it was not good for them politically, he cut everything and we started this debate,” believes Decroix.
He sees the chances of agreement as zero at the moment. “As the prime minister said at the congress: we will have no choice but to make changes, and whether or not the ANO movement will participate in them will be their business card, not ours,” he advises.
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However, according to Juchelka, negotiating with the government is not easy for its internal organization. “Regarding the care allowance, MPs from the coalition came to me and said that, unfortunately, they could not raise their hand for it, because the management would not allow it,” he criticizes. “He must raise his hand as one man. It works on a sect basis.”
The problem is mainly the reluctance of both parties to share their know-how. “Because the opposition is not discussed before the parameters are changed, it is not possible to discuss the contextual pension reform, because it does not exist even in the government coalition,” thinks Juchelka. “We always just give an opinion, that’s part of the opposition’s work.”
According to Decroix, however, such an attitude is alibi. “There are words that are not necessary in the political sphere. Whether it is the word lie that we try to create who is right. It doesn’t include sect or words like charade,” he counters.
“Politics is not only about content, but also about form. The statements that were made do not contribute to the political culture,” he concludes. “The bottom keeps falling with every election period and obviously with every new reform.”
You can listen to more details about the dispute between the government coalition and the ANO movement, negotiations with the president or the government’s cooperation with the opposition in preparing changes in the recording of the entire discussion above.
Jan Bumba, est
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