Pirates jump ship: Czech ruling coalition loses a member

The Czech Republic’s Pirate Party announced it was quitting the five-member ruling coalition in Prague on Wednesday afternoon, deepening a crisis that has hobbled the Czech government since its poor performance in regional elections over the weekend.

Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala told the press following a morning cabinet meeting that Pirate Party leader Ivan Bartoš had informed him of his intention to withdraw the three ministers representing the party and to quit the government as a whole. The party formally confirmed the step later in the day.

“The departure of the Pirates should be a wake-up call for the entire ruling coalition,” Fiala told a press conference in Prague.

Fiala’s coalition parties performed miserably in regional elections last weekend in which the opposition ANO (Action of Dissatisfied Citizens) party of former PM Andrej Babiš scored a landslide victory. ANO won 10 out of the country’s 13 regions on 35 percent of the vote, good for 292 seats out of the 685 available.

Fiala’s ODS (Civic Democracy) finished second on less than 6 percent of the vote, but even that result bested the Pirates, who crashed from 99 seats in regional assemblies to just three.

Fiala originally proposed on Tuesday that only Bartoš quit as regional development minister, but the party has now withdrawn its remaining nominees from the cabinet, Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský and Legislation Minister Michal Šalomoun.

“There are many things we have been able to fight in government,” Bartoš posted on Facebook on Wednesday following the announcement that the Pirates were packing their bags.

“And many more that we will continue to support. We are definitely not stopping, see you in the opposition.”

The departure of the Pirates will cut Fiala’s already slim majority in the 200-seat legislature from 108 seats to 104. The Czech Republic is due to hold parliamentary elections in October next year.

The Fiala government has the lowest public support of any administration in the Czech Republic since 2013, with only 24 percent of respondents saying they trust the cabinet in a summer poll by the Center for Public Opinion Research.