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The citizens of Brno are going to vote for a new municipal council on Friday and Saturday.

Nobody dares to forecast the results. However, the coalition of social democrats, christian democrats and greens will have a tough job to defend the opposition, consisting of liberal-conservative parties Civic democrats, TOP09 and “Public affairs” that won the spring parliamentary election.

The coalition, as well as mayor Roman Onderka, are facing criticism mainly for these reasons:

• Although the left-wing parties protested against the construction of the new main railway station before the 2006 election, then they suddenly changed their minds and started to support it when they got the power. What’s more, they want to keep the current main train station too, which has the disadvantages of both projects and lacks many of their advantages.
• The municipal council supports the construction of a privately-owned garages beneath the Zelný trh sq. Experts warn that the garages can cause danger to the unique system of medieval cellars (which will be made avaible to tourists in several months), as well to the baroque fountain Parnas. The reigning politicians claim that the garages are necessary to “keep life” in the centre of Brno. Well, they’d better allow biking in the centre!
• The “cock clock” was not accepted well by general public in Brno, as it has a shape of penis, it costed CZK 12M (€500,000) and people can not read the time until they read a manual.
• The town has spent CZK 600,000 for motto “Žít Brno” (“to live Brno”) which was accepted as a marketing disaster by local press and many citizens.

Actually, it is pretty hard to recall just a single success of Mr. Onderka’s team (OK, the water in the Brno dam lake is clearer now, but this has been accomplished by various institutions). However, it would be naïve to expect any improvement from the other parties, as Civic democrats are often being linked to corruption – few weeks ago, Aleš Kvapil, the former mayor of quarter Žabovřesky, was sentenced to seven years in prison.

I will inform you about the election results when it is clear who is going to be the new mayor and which parties are going to support him or her.

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