ANO party conference approves new statutes

At its weekend election conference the ANO party of the ruling coalition unanimously re-elected Finance Minister Andrej Babiš its leader and approved an amendment to the party’s statutes, without debate. The party’s new statutes confirm the strong position of the party leader and modify the rights of the party leadership to give regional heads a greater say in decision-making. The conference also discussed the party’s policy programme and the measure to which it had managed to implement its priorities within the ruling coalition.

Party leader, Finance Minister Andrej Babiš, indicated in his opening speech to the conference that the process of fulfilling the party’s policy programme was being hampered by the party’s coalition partners, particularly the Social Democrats, whom he criticized for overly generous hand-outs of public funds which they wanted to compensate for by raising taxes. Some political commentators read this as a signal of the party’s shift to the right and a move to broaden its scope of supporters.