Prague, July 10 (CTK) – The leaders of ANO and the Social Democrats (CSSD) signed a coalition agreement between their parties today, on the eve of the Chamber of Deputies’ vote of confidence in the ANO-CSSD minority government.
In recent days, the coalition agreement was signed by the two parties’ deputies.
The second cabinet of ANO leader Andrej Babis will ask the lower house for a confidence vote on Wednesday.
Since ANO and the CSSD together have only 93 seats in the 200-seat Chamber of Deputies, they will rely on support from the 15 deputies for the Communist Party (KSCM).
The KSCM pledged to tolerate the minority cabinet in a special toleration pact it signed with ANO representatives shortly before the ANO-CSSD coalition was signed today.
The Wednesday vote of confidence will take place on the 263rd day after the last October general election.
If the government failed to win confidence of the lower house, it would have to resign as Babis’s first ANO minority cabinet did in January. Then Chamber of Deputies chairman Radek Vondracek (ANO) would be in charge of the third attempt to form a cabinet.
The other six parties in parliament declared that they would vote against the government.
After signing the coalition pact Babis told reporters that he wished his government were one team and worked considerably better than the previous coalition cabinet. He hinted at the government of Bohuslav Sobotka, comprised of the CSSD, ANO and the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL), in which Babis was finance minister and deputy PM.
CSSD deputy group head Jan Chvojka told reporters that the signing of the coalition agreement would terminate instability in the country.