Zdeněk Šarapatka thanked his supporters and stated that their support helped him get back on his feet after the results of the Senate elections. According to him, the campaign in Prague 5 and 13 was not a fair competition about topics, but a contest over billboards. He claimed that one of the candidates was running a concurrent campaign for the Senate and the Prague City Hall, transferring funds between them, including money from a company building houses. According to Šarapatka, the state supervision office did not respond to the violations of the rules. The candidate, he claimed, received 14,606 votes out of a total of 45,782. Šarapatka also criticized the ODS, which, according to him, despite an agreement with his TOP 09, fielded its own candidate, thereby reducing the chances of defeating Václav Láska. He stated that their candidate hardly presented political positions during public appearances and instead relied on a romanticized story about the students' relationship with the school principal. He added that the students of the candidate's school, according to Šarapatka, got involved in the campaign, even though the principal was balancing on the edge of the education law. The candidate received 12,162 votes out of 45,782. As an earlier example of the split with ODS, Šarapatka mentioned its member Benda, who, according to him, appointed Matocha and Xaver Veselý to the Czech Television Council. He claimed that part of ODS contributed to his failure in the election despite the party agreements at that time. He also recalled that six years ago, at ODS's request, he supported its candidate in the second round of the Senate elections in Mělník, whom he claimed he had not seen publicly appear in the Senate since then. Šarapatka stated that he would not make the same mistake again. According to him, the result meant that there would be no amendment to the lustration law nor security clearances for government members and their deputies, and that there would be no qualified fight for a free Czech Radio and Czech Television. At the same time, he urged his supporters to keep going. #politika #volby #Senát (translated)
