Czech Green Party co-chair wants Interior Ministry to dissolve the "Freedom and Direct Democracy" Movement

News server Info.cz reported last week that Ondřej Mirovský, co-chair of the Czech Republic's Green Party, has said he wants to ask the Interior Ministry to dissolve Tomio Okamura's "Freedom and Direct Democracy" Movement (SPD). Mirovský made the decision after Okamura invited extremist politicians from all over Europe to Prague.

The SPD holds 22 seats in the lower house. The movement won those seats through a campaign in which they greatly criticized the current state of politics and advocated for a strongly anti-immigration policy.

It is exactly because of those strongly xenophobic attitudes toward immigrants that the movement could possibly be dissolved, just as the Workers' Party (DS) was several years ago. The chair of the Supreme Administrative Court in Brno, Vojtěch Šimíček, justified dissolving the DS by stating that it could be considered "populist, homophobic, chauvinist and demonstrating racist tendencies".

"The actual program of the Workers' Party, seen in the light of the speeches made by representatives and members of that party and the speeches given at assemblies organized by the DS, aims to incite national, racial, ethnic and social intolerance and, as a consequence, amounts to an effort to restrict the fundamental rights and freedoms of certain groups of inhabitants of the Czech Republic," the court stated when it dissolved the DS. Mirovský already has a legal assessment elaborated according to which the SPD is very similar to the DS.

The assessment states that the SPD program is formulated such that it does not break the law. However, that is not the case when it comes to the SPD's behavior during its own meetings or in online social networks, which is where Mirovský collected his background evidence.

"The motion to dissolve the SPD is a demonstration of my civic position. I hear people discussing that party as dictatorial, undemocratic, and unconstitutional. Given what happens at its meetings and how the members of that party and their sympathizers manifest their beliefs, it is, in my view, appropriate for the bodies that are empowered to assess such matters do so," Mirovský, who is also Vice-Mayor for the Prague 7 Municipal Department, told Info.cz.

Individuals do not have standing in the Czech Republic to propose that a party be dissolved. The Government can make such a request and the Supreme Administrative Court must decide about the dissolution.