Czech Pirate Party calls on Prime Minister to stop spreading lies

The Czech Pirate Party has called on Prime Minister Andrej Babiš to apologize for publicly lying Thursday when he wrote on Twitter that the Pirates want to impose a tax on people who live in large flats, and move migrants into their flats.

If Babiš does not withdraw his statement, the Pirates will take the case to court.

"The Pirates, of course, have never had anything like this in their program and they will never have, and Andrej Babiš and his colleagues know it very well," Pirates leader Ivan Bartoš said.

He said Babiš‘ actions are unacceptable, and it is necessary to protest against them.

"He does not mind publishing disinformation, and what is even worse, to use it to scare people who already have enough to worry about due to the pandemic," Bartoš said.

Babiš told CTK that the actions of the Pirates made him laugh because they keep acting as "professional informers". He referred to the fact that the Pirates initiated a European Commission audit concerning his suspected conflict of interest.

"Without the auditors, the police, courts and Babiš they would not know what to do," Babiš said on Friday.

After Babiš spoke in parliament during the debate before a no-confidence vote that his government survived on Thursday, there was a discussion about his attitude on sharing the economy.

In parliament, he criticized the Pirates when he said "we don’t want to share our country," but when describing his vision of the future in a book released a few years ago, he said people would share cars, flats, and cottages soon.

To explain this seeming discrepancy, Babiš said on Twitter that he had in mind voluntary sharing.

"Not obligatory, which is the plan of the Pirates who want to first map out apartments, tax the excess square meters, and then move somebody in there. Possibly some migrant," he tweeted.

The general election to elect a new Czech government will take place in October. The latest opinion polls show that the coalition of the Pirates and the Mayors and Independents (STAN) is more popular than the ANO Party headed by Babiš.

Bartoš said that the government is currently facing many scandals, and instead of accepting responsibility for them, Babiš tries to lay the blame for his failures on the Pirates-STAN coalition to divert public attention. He said Babiš has been spreading false information about the Pirates for a long time, but his latest statement is too much.

"We won’t tolerate the manipulation of voters and scaremongering," Bartoš said.