Prague, March 2 (CTK) – The Czech Chamber of Deputies will deal with the proposed dismissal of Tomio Okamura as its deputy head at an extraordinary session on Wednesday, Jan Bartosek said on behalf of the step’s initiators today, adding that he has collected enough MPs’ signatures for the session to be convoked.
Critics want Okamura, head of the anti-EU Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) movement, to be dismissed as a lower house deputy chairman over the SPD members’ statements about a wartime Roma concentration camp in Lety, south Bohemia.
“It is impossible to keep silent on their comments on the Lety concentration camp, such as that it was a never existing alleged concentration camp or that the Lety camp was not fenced,” Bartosek (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) said.
Several hundreds of people died in the Lety camp and further several hundreds ended in the Auschwitz extermination camp.
“It is important for deputies to say whether they want a man, who represents a party with such opinions, also to represent the Czech Republic in a high constitutional post,” Bartosek said.
He said he has collected more than 40 deputies’ signatures that are needed to lodge a request for an extraordinary session.
“The Chamber of Deputies chairman has accepted the request and decided to convoke it for 14:30 next Wednesday,” Bartosek said.
The session, nevertheless, need not take place at all in case the Chamber of Deputies did not approve its agenda. Even if so, however, a space for discussing the Okamura issue would open, though limited.
Bartosek admitted the risk of the agenda not being approved but said he has initiated the session so that the SPD’s comments are discussed.