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"Carpe diem" or "Seize the day" is the motto of the newly appointed vice-chair of the Chamber, Jana Mračková Vildumetzová (ANO), who combines her career in politics with the role of a caring and loving mother.
How do you feel about the fact that the ANO Movement was beaten out in the election by a three-party coalition, and only by a slight margin at that?
Allow me to present you with an analogy. At the Olympics, three javelin throwers from one country decide to join together and add up their throws into one final aggregate throw, only narrowly beating out a single javelin thrower representing his country on his own. The three throwers will likely come out on top, but everyone will know that they must not be on form if their three throws added together only beat the single thrower's attempt by such a narrow margin. Now let us come back to reality. We are certainly not alone in thinking that we, the ANO Movement, are the true winners of the election, seeing as we had over 27 percent of the votes, and more than 1,4 million Czech people voted for us. The voting system works in such a way that a victory is not enough, unfortunately; you need a majority in the Chamber, meaning at least 101 Members. This is a majority that the Spolu and PirSTAN coalition has achieved after the election. Allow me to add, in the spirit of the above, that this was an aggregate throw of five proverbial javelin throwers, making their victory a rather sad one.
The ANO movement is now in the opposition, but you are the vice-chair of the Chamber. What does this position entail? What do you have influence over?
The opposition has always had a proportionate amount of representatives in the Chamber's leading positions. To be more precise, in the last term, it was a ratio of three coalition to three opposition leaders. But with the coming of the new governing parties, times and conventions in the Chamber are changing, and now the ratio is at five for the coalition to two for the opposition. As part of the Chamber administration, we are not only responsible for directing the meetings, but also making sure that the opposition's rights are not infringed upon, as well as overseeing the Government's actions. A vice-chair of the Chamber also implicitly becomes a member of the Steering Committee, which decides the bills that will be negotiated as part of the Chamber's agenda. These facts also speak to the nature of the people who want to govern us for the upcoming four years. And my role? I want to be a kind of connection between the Chamber and municipalities, cities, and regions. I want to support mayors and regional presidents and make sure that their needs are discussed in the Chamber in as timely a manner as possible.
What will be the main points on your agenda as the opposition?
There is no shame in being in the opposition. We are agreed that we will be a hard, strict, diligent, but constructive opposition. We want to oversee all aspects. Our main focus will be the economy. The new government speaks of making cutbacks, but they have three more ministerial chairs than was previously the norm. The fact that all of them will not even fit in the space meant for ministers and the PM in the Chamber is rather comical. The aforementioned two coalitions plan to make budget cuts worth 110 billion, but when asked where they have no answer. The only thing we do know is that they likely plan to cancel subsidized public transportation fare for students and seniors and implement a stopgap budget plan, which is a bad move. Especially in terms of investments, but also in matters of increasing the wages of healthcare workers and other forces of public safety.
Let us look back on what the ANO Movement has done in the past years of its rule…
We have made good on 85 percent of what we have promised as part of our platform. We have managed to increase pensions, as well as the wages of teachers, policemen, firemen, and healthcare workers, we have lowered taxes, and increased the parental allowance to 300 thousand crowns. Billions of crowns were invested into transportation-, culture-, healthcare-, education-, and sports-related projects. We have implemented the EET (Electronic Sales Records) reports, and our national debt is the sixth lowest in the EU, in spite of the pandemic.
I have to ask about the pandemic.
I will say that we were subjected to immense pressure and had to make decisions with no precedent or prior experience with such a dangerous, and sadly even deadly, virus. Despite all that, I believe that many of the actions and decisions were correct or at least well-intended. Not all things were handled well or had the desired effect, however. There are many such things, but what is important to us is that our conscience is clear, that we know we did the best we could. The gravity of the situation is further illustrated not only by this new wave of the pandemic but also the fact that no country in the world has dealt with it adequately.
Your husband is a member of the ODS and you are a member of ANO. You are proof that people of different political affiliations can get along and even love one another. Do you bring your work home with you?
Fortunately, we are both mature and experienced people who do not allow things such as politics to interfere with the running of our household. In the many years we have been together, neither one of us has brought their work home with them. It is clear, however, that our views on certain things are very different. There are certainly moments at home when one of us will let something slip, so to speak, but we both feel that politics and family are two entirely separate things. And that is where we agree – family, and a happy one at that, is the most important thing we have in life.
Your son, Jan, was born when you were 47. That is a rather risky age for a woman to be giving birth. How was your pregnancy?
Honzík is a gift, one that my husband and I appreciate very much. My pregnancy went quite well, I stopped working when I was seven months in. Roughly two months before giving birth, I had terrible back pains and I had trouble sleeping. Honzík was born two weeks early, when Covid had just struck, and so his dad could not be there with me. That was very hard for me. It still makes me very sad to this day, but there is nothing to be done now. The main thing is that everything went well. Honzíček is a source of immense joy, and despite me and my husband being very busy with work, we spend all of our free time together, which makes us very happy.
You were sick with Covid last Christmas. Are you going to make up for it this time around?
That is true. I was very unwell, so we did not enjoy too much of that Christmas peace and quiet. We love Christmas, and we start getting ready as soon as the first Advent Sunday comes. We keep a lot of traditions, and we believe that everything and everyone will be fine this year. My husband's parents as well as my mother will be with us on Christmas Eve. We are all most excited to see how our twenty-month-old Honzík will take to Christmas. And as for the New Year, I wish everyone health and, if at all possible, happiness.
Jana Mračková Vildumetzová (born May 8, 1973, in Karlovy Vary) is an MP for the ANO 2011 Movement. As of November, she is the vice-chair of the Chamber and a member of the Steering Committee.
In 1995, she graduated from the Faculty of Education at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. She went on to teach at a primary school in Horní Slavkov for five years. Between the years 2000 and 2006, Mračková Vildumetzová held various managerial positions in the public administration and worked as a director of a youth center as well as a town culture center. From 2002, she was a representative of Horní Slavkov and later went on to become the mayor.
#She was a member of the ODS for six years, in 2014, she was the deputy minister of interior for two years, and a year later she joined the ANO Movement. In the 2016 regional elections, she was number one on the ticket in the Karlovy Vary Region, and she was elected as a representative. The same year, she was elected as president of the Karlovy Vary Region and chair of the Association of Regions of the Czech Republic.
She is married and has a son, Jan.
Mayor and regional president
She remembers her years as mayor of Horní Slavkov fondly and is very open about owing the town a great deal for her advance into high politics. "This town will always be close to my heart, and whenever I come to Horní Slavkov, I feel great there. I am also lucky enough to keep encountering locals who are very supportive, which is something I appreciate even after so many years. As for the Karlovy Vary Region, I left the position of president at the end of 2019 due to my pregnancy. I am quite sure that some of my political rivals were very happy with this decision, but I made it for my family, which comes before all else. The job is taxing, but I enjoyed it and did it responsibly and to the best of my ability. I was very careful about where every crown went, I checked every order and invoice, and I made sure that money was being saved and not spent recklessly. The Karlovy Vary Region was the stage of a paradox similar to the one that happened in the Chamber this year. Our movement had won last year's regional elections fair and square, but our other, less successful, political rivals joined together to form a rarely-seen coalition of eleven political entities, which makes for quite a hodgepodge."
At the 9th Winter Olympics of Children and Youth hosted by the Karlovy Vary Region.
reklama
