7 ms·

Any Czech person around to chim in and shed some light on the implications?

• rebolek 8y ago
  Czech here. We will see. He's totally unknown, without any experience in politics. But after the previous disastrous mayor, it's pretty hard to be worse.
  • 1wd 8y ago
    According to [1] the previous mayor was Adriana Krnáčová [2]. There's not much information there. Can you elaborate why she was disastrous? There seems to be a connection to the Blanka tunnel complex [3]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_municipal_election,_2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_municipal_election,_201... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriana_Krn%C3%A1%C4%8Dov%C3%A1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriana_Krn%C3%A1%C4%8Dov%C3%A... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanka_tunnel_complex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanka_tunnel_complex
    • runn1ng 8y ago
      From my point of view: most building and development were stopped or stuck, so prices of flats skyrocketed and infrastructure was not maintained. Part of reason was overreaction to the mayor who built the tunnel - the construction was overpriced and took 10 times the time it should, so mayors after him were afraid to invest too much in infrastructure at all. Which had negative effects in bridges falling apart, and city being in permanent traffic jam. My other point of view: I used to be active member of Czech Pirate Party years ago when it was small, and it is still a little funny and frightening to me at the same time that those people will be responsible for city of 1 million people. But, what's the worse that can happen...
      • martinwww 8y ago
        Well it will be hard for him as reconstruction of Barrandov bridge should start within 2 years. It's major road for transit in/around Prague.
    • tombuben 8y ago
      Blanka tunnels is an older issue, but under Krnáčová the entire Prague traffic system basically collapsed. There are frequent traffic jams and basically all bridges are in disastrous state. Libeň bridge, one of the only few Cubist style bridges in the world, has been closed for past two years, Troja pedestrian bridge collapsed last year and just a few days ago it turned out another bridge has to be collapsed and rebuilt from scratch. Add to that the fact that she called the people complaining about the traffic issues "zpovykaní" or whiners and that adds up to a lot of people not liking her at all.
      • lousken 8y ago
        [1] https://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/collapse-of-prague-footbridge-raises-concerns-regarding-state-of-other-bridges https://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/collapse-of-prague... [2] https://www.radio.cz/en/section/business/section-of-key-prague-bridge-set-for-demolition https://www.radio.cz/en/section/business/section-of-key-prag... & https://prague.tv/en/s72/Directory/c207-Travel/n16048-Bridge-closed-at-Vltavska-metro-stop https://prague.tv/en/s72/Directory/c207-Travel/n16048-Bridge...
      • qwerty456127 8y ago
        > so prices of flats skyrocketed This was amazing. A friend of mine has bought a humble flat and got 100% profit on the investment in just a couple of years! What are the chances the prices are going to fall significantly? Should I advice him to sell now?
        • roel_v 8y ago
          Probably best to not advise anyone based on random comments from some dude/dudette on the internet...
          • qwerty456127 8y ago
            It's usually nice to advice as long as you don't insist you're right and as long as the person you advice doesn't follow your advices blindly but just takes your opinion and the observations behind it in consideration. For some people that can't handle advices the right way a misleading (and the chances it's misleading are always high) advice can be very harmful but for others advices from reasonable people that know what they're saying can be a valuable source of information. Anyway, that was me who has told him "my opinion is you should buy this flat now!" to remove his hesitations and it turned out a huge win, I feel like I should also provide a clue when to sell to secure it perhaps.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • analog31 8y ago
    Is there any relationship to the Pirate party in Iceland?
    • slim 8y ago
      Yes all pirate parties are connected. There's even a gouvernance body https://pp-international.net https://pp-international.net
• TomMarius 8y ago
  Yes, I'm Czech living in Prague. Last 4 years the Prague local government was led by ANO, the party led by StB (communist secret police) member billionaire Andrej Babis. Their campaign was extremely strong then and they won - today Prague is in horrendous state, bridges are literally falling down (2 more just this week), traffic is worse (extremely worse!) than ever due to idiotically planned long roadworks that have to be soon redone and zero construction of much needed infrastructure, the public transport is way worse than it was, taxi mafia is still the same, they caused a huge housing bubble... And on top of that Krnacova calls Prague people who don't like it "whiners", repeatedly and on purpose - she even recently confirmed that it's exactly what she wanted to say. The major implication for the whole country is that at least Prague citizens are absolutely fed up with ANO - that is important because they dominated the whole country politics for the last 2 periods. Today there are 2 other major parties - ODS (Občansko-demokratická strana, Civic Democracy Party) and the Pirate party. These are the three winners of the recent parliament vote - parliament politics affect local politics a lot in the Czech Republic. If you don't want to vote ANO then you vote ODS if you're more on the right (as in free market) and the Pirate party if you're more on the left. There are basically no other options - the remaining "major" (bigger than others but has almost no influence) party in the country is a racist one. Other previously major parties such as ČSSD (social democracy), KDU-ČSL (the Roman-Catholics) and KSČM (literal communists) have fallen down significantly over last 2 periods, most probably because of their cooperation with ANO. Pirates have a good track record as far as local politics go, but it's a relatively new party and they only participated in smaller cities/villages so far (on top of their recent entry to parliament). This person is completely unknown. Let's see.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • runn1ng 8y ago
    Taxi mafia is the only thing I don't agree with. Uber shaked that up pretty well.
    • Amygaz 8y ago
      Price-wise is Uber competitive or is it for the top 10% ?
• druidcz 8y ago
  Honestly I don't know why this should even be on HN. Disclaimer: I don't live in Prague.
  • DiabloD3 8y ago
    He's a member of the Pirate Party, the (unofficial?) party of HN. I can't see why this wouldn't be on here.
    • druidcz 8y ago
      OK, I was not aware of this political aspect of HN.
      • netsharc 8y ago
        Pirate Party was founded to bring attention to copyright law (and the effect the internet was having) to government: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/02/rick-falkvinge-is-the-face/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/02/rick-falkvinge-i... , which is probably an issue any computer hacker has an opinion on. On a slightly off-topic note, I've been playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided the last few weeks, which takes place in Prague, so this headline made me wonder for a moment if I was in-game...
  • skrebbel 8y ago
    Well it's a welcome change from the usual local SF politics.
• deusex_ 8y ago
  There's a joke going on that the Pirate Party is the IT department of the communist party. In general the trouble with Pirates is unpredictability. They are very socially liberal, but economically and geopolitically they attract a wide mix of opinions. The have a higher incidence of conspiration theorist, they have a strong anti-US base, and in general they avoid to address these topics since it cannot pass the internal voting that is part of their control structure. In communal politics it does not have so severe implications, so the biggest question is how fit he is managerial wise. The new mayor was virtually unknown before the election, it's just a gamble at this moment and everybody is "let's wait and see, can't be worse than the previous arrogant mayor Krnacova from ANO"
  • fjsolwmv 8y ago
    Communist, or Anarchist?
    • a-saleh 8y ago
      That is the thing. Nobody knows yet. So far from what I have actually seen in their actions, there are more along the lines of mild-mannered dreadlocked bureaucrats with technological-streak.
    • sodomak 8y ago
      They are not anarchists, just leftists.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  • AsyncAwait 8y ago
    > There's a joke going on that the Pirate Party is the IT department of the communist party. Yes, because in Eastern Europe, if you're even slightly left, or don't agree with U.S. on everything, you must be a communist. Apparently from one block to the other. As someone from that part of the world, I generally find it annoying that people automatically assume left == communist because of the Soviet past. As a result, we mostly have only right-wing or neoliberal type parties in Eastern Europe, because if you propose any sort of social democracy, you'd end up being attached to communism. I view it as very unfortunate and simplistic. As in, communism didn't work out, let's run waaay to the right. Oh, right is bad? Let's run even further to the right, that outta fix it! (Failing to realize that what you really dislike is authoritarianism, which these all share.) How about a social democracy? The Scandinavian model? Market economy with strong social programs. So you could start a business without being absolutely mortified about what'd happen if it fails, for example? How else is the overall standard of living supposed to improve over there? Corporate tax cuts and trickle-down economics has been tried, it doesn't work.
• dejv 8y ago
  We will see, pirate party here is growing up and this is their first important role. It might end up great or they might get eaten by old school mafia type business people.
• RivieraKid 8y ago
  I voted for the Pirates but actually hoped that the leader of another party in the coalition, Jan Čižinský, would become tha mayor. He has proven himself to be a successful and effective manager when he was in charge of Prague 7. Hřib was never in such a high level position. Regarding the implications, all 3 parties in the coalition mostly agree about everything. I'm happy about the result and about ANO losing.
  • azag0 8y ago
    Let's hope then that Hřib is sensible enough that if he finds out he's not up to the job in the process, he'll cede it to Čižinský
• megous 8y ago
  Not even Czech people can read the future. All I hope for is that he will lead well. The important thing here is the change in the leading coalition. Prague is also divided into smaller parts, that have their own leadership, and that is also important for individual citizens. In the part where I live, I was quite happy with how it changed in the last 4 years. There were things that were built, that improved my life, and there were public and priate projects started that will improve it even further. Even on the whole city level, the public transport got significantly cheaper 3 years ago.