Czech Republic: DSSS will not sit on Krupka town council

The 14 000-strong town of Krupka na Teplicku has a new mayor, Zdeněk Matouš, who served as the town’s Vice Mayor prior to the latest round of elections. Matouš was elected to that post in 2005 as an independent candidate. There is a problem, however: Non-profit organizations and the opposition have linked Matouš to the vote-buying which resulted in Krupka’s elections being repeated twice. Matouš has always rejected the allegations. Now that the results of this third election have been recognized by the court, all of the parties have concluded a coalition agreement there, with the exception of the Workers’ Social Justice Party (Dělnická strana sociální spravedlnosti – DSSS) and the Healthy Krupka (Zdravá Krupka – ZK) party.

Communist party member Jaroslav Dubský has now been elected Vice-Mayor. Representatives of four other parties, including the Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD) and the Civic Democrats (ODS), voted for him. The post-electoral negotiations were very hectic. Just before the court issued its verdict, all of the parties distanced themselves from ZK, indicating what kind of coalition was being formed.

Zdravá Krupka was the loudest critic of the vote-buying and found itself in isolation during the post-electoral negotiations. The election of Matouš as mayor surprised many locals. Prior to the court’s decision, he had told people off the record that he was not interested in the mayoral post.

The opposition suspects Matouš of wanting to stay in power in order to cover up fraud he allegedly perpetrated during the construction of the Nové Modlany business zone. According to Czech Television, Matouš bought land in 2005 for a very low price which then increased in value thanks to planning changes associated with the development. He is alleged to have made about CZK 43 million on the deal.

Matouš rejects allegations that he has done anything wrong. When asked about the deal by the Czech Press Agency at the start of October, he answered that he did make money on the transaction, but not as much as has been alleged, emphasizing that he has not broken the law.

Roughly 100 people attended the town council meeting yesterday where the mayor was elected. A significant number were men connected with the local football club and indirectly with the “Athletes for Krupka” (Sportovci pro Krupku) grouping, which won three of the 21 council seats and was the first to negotiate with Matouš about the coalition. During the time that Matouš was Vice Mayor, the local football club made it from district competition to the regional championships, the fifth-largest contest in the country. As a result, the run-down local football pitch has been transformed into an attractive stadium. Whenever representatives of Zdravá Krupka tried to speak at the meeting, the “footballers” ridiculed them.

Suspicions of vote-buying accompanied all three elections. Last October, several dozen Romani people crammed into the parking lot at the Horní Maršov housing estate where unidentified persons distributed pre-completed ballots and drove voters to the polls to deposit them in the urns. The new mayor’s association was linked to the bribery, but Matouš rejected the allegations. “It was never proven, not even in court, who was paying those bribes, and I seriously doubt whether any bribes were paid at all, ” he said. “The people making those claims were mostly local drunks and homeless people and their motivations are suspect.”

DSSS chair Tomáš Vandas also attended yesterday’s town council meeting but did not intervene during it. He told journalists he had come to observe because even though the DSSS had achieved its most significant municipal election results ever in Krupka, the party was not being included on the town council.

The court originally confirmed the first election results, but annulled them after critics filed a successful constitutional complaint against the process. The results of the second election were also declared invalid as there were various signals that vote-buying had taken place again.

The court has approved the results of the third election, even though the NGO Transparency International has obtained a recording of an interview with the man who allegedly organized the vote-buying. On the recording the man claims, among other things, that Matouš hired him. The court said the recording was not sufficient proof of wrongdoing.

In all three cases of vote-buying, voters were said to have been given CZK 300 each. Given that roughly 30 % of those eligible to vote did so, the “buying” of all 4 000 voters would have ultimately cost about CZK 1.2 million.