Kuchtová to run for top party post

Dana Kuchtová, deputy chairwoman of the Green Party, has announced she will challenge Martin Bursík for the party’s top post at an extraordinary party conference in September. She has been one of Mr Bursík’s most vocal critics, accusing the Greens leader of autocratic practices and claiming that he was not doing enough to defend the party’s policy programme within the governing coalition. At a press conference in Prague on Wednesday Dana Kuchtová said that the Greens had veered too far right, when they should rightly be a centrist party. Party leader Martin Bursík, who has come under a lot of pressure from both inside and outside the party, recently called an extraordinary conference at which he plans to run for re-election in order to boost his mandate ahead of crucial votes in Parliament.