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President Miloš Zeman will start collecting signatures in support of his bid for his second, five-year term in office as head of state on Monday. In an interview for the private TV Barrandov on Thursday evening, Mr Zeman said his election team will be headed by his wife Ivana, adding that she will be the first to sign the petition. As an independent presidential candidate, Mr Zeman has to collect at least 50,000 valid signatures to support his bid.

President Miloš Zeman is presently the most popular candidate among those running in the 2018 presidential elections, according to a poll conducted for Czech Radio by the Median polling agency. If elections were here held today Miloš Zeman would win 37 percent of the vote in the first round, followed by lyricist and entrepreneur Michal Horáček with 20 percent and the former head of the Czech Academy of Sciences Jiri Drahoš with 17 percent. Lesser known candidates such as physician Marek Hilšer or businessman Igor Sládek would be left far behind with just two and one percent of the vote respectively. Twenty-one percent of those polled said they were not yet sure who they would vote for.

The Social Democrats, who head the current government coalition, have put off an inner-party referendum on who to nominate or back for president until November - after the parliamentary election on October 20 and 21. Earlier, the first half of 2017 had been discussed. Czechs will go to the polls to elect a new president at the latest by February 2018. Several candidates have already announced they are running, including the sitting president, Miloš Zeman, who will be seeking a second - and final - five year term.

Finance Minister Andrej Babiš, the leader of the ANO party, has told the site info.cz he will not choose a candidate for the party to support for president, but that the successful candidate would be chosen from an inner-party referendum. No date for a referendum has been set. One name often mentioned as a possible candidate for ANO is Defence Minister Martin Stropnický, but the minister has declined and is heading the party’s candidate’s list in Prague in the upcoming elections to Parliament.

Jiří Drahoš‏, a former head of the Academy of Sciences, has become the latest candidate to throw his hat into the ring for the post of Czech president. But what are the chances of the scientist beating the incumbent Miloš Zeman and the other contenders in next year’s presidential elections?

Former head of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Jiří Drahoš, has announced his decision to run in the 2018 presidential elections. the news site Aktualne.cz reported on Tuesday. Mr Drahoš, who will run as an independent, announced his decision at a public debate in Jablunkov in the Frýdek-Místek region, where he comes from. Mr Drahoš, who is 68, said he decided to run for the post becuase he was worried about the future of the country`s democracy.

Karel Štogl, a former diplomat at OSCE, has announced his decision to run in the 2018 presidential elections. According to the news site Neovlivni.cz Štogl will run as an independent and will be launching his campaign in June. Among the candidates for the presidential post are Miloš Zeman who announced last week he would seek re-election, lyricist Michal Horáček, and physician and civic activist Marek Hilšer.

President Zeman’s supporters have started collecting signatures in support of his candidacy for president. Although the Social Democratic Party has yet to vote on whether to field or back a candidate, Zeman’s supporters started gathering signatures in his support in Brno where the party held its election conference over the weekend. The Bloc against Islam is reported to have collected a thousand signatures in Prague and Zeman’s long-term supporter Jana Volfová has collected 1,500. As an independent candidate Zeman needs to collect 50,000 signatures to enter the race.

Milos Zeman will be a strong contestant in the 2018 presidential elections but not a certain winner, political observers say in response to the president’s bid for re-election. Commentaries in Saturdays papers predict that the presidential elections will be a race of “everyone against Zeman”. They say that a successful rival would have to match Zeman's rhetoric skills and present better solutions to the country’s problems that those proffered by the present head of state.

President Miloš Zeman has officially announced his decision to run for a second, five-year, term in office. Although the field of declared candidates for the post is still small, political observers say the president will be a tough rival with the undisputed advantage of campaigning in office.