Interior Ministry approves nine candidates to run for position of Czech president next year

The Ministry of Interior announced the list of candidates who have fulfilled the necessary legal conditions to be able to run for the position of President of Czechia in next year’s January election.

A total of 21 candidates handed in requests to the ministry. However, only nine passed. These were ANO party leader Andrej Babiš, member of the Chamber of Deputies Jaroslav Bašta, senators Pavel Fischer and Marek Hilšer, former Mendel University rector Danuše Nerudová, retired general Petr Pavel, Denisa Rohanová, who heads ČAP – an association focused on helping debtors, trade union leader Josef Středula, former Charles University rector Tomáš Zima.

Each candidate was required to have fulfilled one of three conditions: the signatures of 10 senators, the signatures of 20 members of the Chamber of Deputies, or 50,000 signatures from ordinary citizens supporting their candidacy.

Those publically known candidates who did not succeed include billionaire Karel Janeček, who drew attention for his expensive and often unorthodox campaign style, or IT businessman Karel Diviš. They both missed the necessary citizen support threshold by less than 2,000 signatures.

Those candidates whom the Ministry of Interior did not deem to have fulfilled the conditions are able to make an appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court by November 30.

Earlier on Friday, Andrej Babiš, who is currently polling in second place behind front-runner Petr Pavel, announced that he will not be taking part in any presidential debates this year. He has also not yet confirmed whether he will be taking part in the January debate between the candidates on Czech Television, saying that he is yet to discuss his campaign strategy with his team