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President Miloš Zeman will appoint the winner of the upcoming parliamentary elections as the next prime minister, the presidential spokesman Jiří Ovčáček told the news site Aktuálně.cz on Saturday. Mr Ovčáček spoke in reaction to the police request to lift the parliamentary immunity of former Finance Minister and ANO parta leader Andrej Babiš and the deputy chairman of the party Jaroslav Faltýnek. The request is connected with the so-called Stork’s Nest affair, where a company belonging to Babiš‘ large agro-chemical group Agrofert applied for a 50 million crown European grant for work on a recreation and hotel complex. The funding was supposed to be directed towards small and medium sized companies. Mr Ovčáček also questioned the fact that the police move came just two months ahead of the general elections in October.

The head of the Christian Democratic Party Pavel Bělobrádek has said he will resign if his party does worse in October’s general elections than it did four years ago. In 2013 the Christian Democrats received 6.7 percent of the vote, which got them a place in the ruling coalition. Bělobrádek told the weekly Euro that he was ready to take responsibility for a poor showing in the elections. The party is hoping to win between 7 and 9 percent of the vote in the upcoming elections. It recently backed out of an agreement to form a coalition with the Mayors and Independents, fearing that they would not win the necessary ten percent of the vote in order to get seats in the lower house.

Wealthy businessman Dalibor Dědek says he will help find non-party candidates to run for the Mayors and Independents group in October’s elections. The founder of security alarms and systems maker Jablotron says he will run himself if enough suitable nominees cannot be found. Mr. Dědek says he will be targeting capable people with unblemished reputations who do not earn money from state contracts or subsidies. The Mayors were meant to stand in the elections with the Christian Democrats but the latter dissolved the coalition.

The combination of the Christian Democrats and mayors and independents, STAN, would have won support from 9.5 percent of Czechs according to a survey carried out by the Median survey agency up till 24 July. The coalition was called off by the Christian Democrats following fears that they would not reach the 10 percent target for support needed to win seats in the lower house of parliament. The poll put ANO in the lead with 27.5 percent support, followed by the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia with 14.5 percent, and the Social Democrats with 14 percent. Support for the centre-right Civic Democrats was registered at 11.0 percent and for the TOP 09 party at 7.5 percent.

The STAN movement of independents and mayors announced Thursday that former mayor of Simily and member of parliament Jan Farský will lead the party in the national campaign for elections to the lower house of parliament in October. Party chairman Petr Gazdik said he wanted to focus on reorganisation within the party and hoped to lead the party’s ticket in the Zlín region. Party leaders said they were targeting an election score of 7 percent. STAN decided this week they would go it alone in the upcoming elections by rejecting an offer from the Christian Democrats to run on their ticket.

Last week, a coalition pact between the Christian Democrats and Mayors and Independents parties appeared on the brink of collapse after the Christian Democrats invited their coalition partners to run on the Christian Democrat ballot in the autumn elections. But on Tuesday, the smaller party instead voted to go-it-alone.

The Mayors and Independents group have decided to stand on their own in October’s general elections, leader Petr Gazdík said on Tuesday. Members voted overwhelmingly to reject an offer from the Christian Democrats to run for parliament on their lists of candidates. The two had formed a coalition in April but it was last week abrogated by the Christian Democrats, who may have feared not reaching the threshold to enter the Chamber of Deputies, which in the case of a two-party coalition would be 10 percent.

A video released in May attempted to cast a newly-emerging coalition between the Christian Democrats and the STAN Party of mayors and independents as a friendship built on courage, dedication and trust. Idyllic scenes showed boys cooperating together growing up to be the leaders of their respective parties – pledging to run together in the upcoming election. That all changed on Tuesday: although the parties still aim to cooperate closely, the coalition, formally-speaking, is dust.

The Christian Democrats have dropped a plan to run as a coalition with the Mayors and Independents group in October’s general elections. Instead they would like representatives of the Mayors to run on the Christian Democrats’ candidates lists, chairman Pavel Bělobrádek said after a meeting of senior party leaders on Tuesday evening. The Mayors are due to respond to the Christian Democrats’ proposal next week but leader Petr Gazdík says he still believes in a coalition. The two groupings, who struck a deal in April, would need to achieve double the electoral threshold – meaning 10 percent in total – to make it into the Chamber of Deputies if they ran in unison.

The leadership of the Christian Democratic party is due to meet Tuesday to discuss its alliance with the party of mayors and independents, STAN. The meeting comes in the wake of June opinion polls which suggest the electoral alliance of the two parties would fail to win more than 10 percent of votes in upcoming elections in October and would therefore not get any seats in the lower house of parliament. Some party leaders have suggested a looser alliance could be agreed which would meant they would only have to exceed the normal 5 percent threshold for winning seats. Others have pointed out the summer polls were wide of the mark ahead of previous general elections.