Jana Volfová, a former Chamber of Deputies member for the governing Social Democrats (ČSSD) who now heads the Czech Sovereignty party, is in the committee of the Bloc against Islam (BAS), established over the weekend, daily Lidové noviny (LN) writes today.
Volfová already played the anti-Islamic card before the latest election to the Chamber of Deputies in 2013, LN writes.
In a television spot as part of the campaign, she scared voters by dressing up in a burqa, it adds.
Volfová said at the meeting of the BAS she would try to have her party join the new anti-Islamic grouping, LN writes.
The Czech Sovereignty party has about 2,000 members, it adds.
“I will recommend to the party board that we should become a part of the BAS. I firmly believe this will happen,” Volfová has told the paper.
“As a bloc, we will be able to support a party in the elections. We want to place our people on the lists of candidates for coalitions in local and regional elections,” she added.
“Or we may support candidates for senators. We will let our people keep their party membership,” Volfová said.
Volfová, 58, was a ČSSD deputy in 1998–2002 and chaired the Social Democrat Women in 1993–2004.
Political scientists say the BAS may be short-lived, because the topic of Islam and Islamization has been taken up by established parties that have better access to the media, and they have formed regional structures, LN writes.
However, the Czech anti-Islamists’ cause was recently boosted in the form of the European refugee quotas, it adds.
If passed, the Czech Republic will have to accept hundreds of refugees including those from the Muslim countries, LN writes.
BAS Chairman Martin Konvička has said its activists collected some 33,000 signatures under a petition against the obligatory reception of immigrants in the Czech Republic.
“What has happened is unbelievable,” Robert Metelec, a member of the BAS board, is quoted as saying.
“We collected over 33,000 signatures in a mere three weeks,” he added.
As the petition has been signed by more than the required 10,000 people, the petition committee of the Chamber of Deputies must deal with it, LN writes.
The activities of the BAS are being watched not only by the intelligence services and the Interior Ministry but also by tradespeople from Arab countries, LN warns.
For them, the anti-Islamic drive may be one of the factors because of which they may prefer other European countries to the Czech Republic, it adds.
However, Konvička says he does not care. If the petition against the quotas fails, and Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka’s center-left coalition government agrees with them, he is ready to launch a petition for the Czech Republic to leave the European Union, LN writes.