The Czech government was plunged into turmoil on September 24 after Prime Minister Petr Fiala sacked the leader of his Pirate party coalition partners as a cabinet minister, a move that looks likely to lead to the defection of the liberal party from the governing centre-right cabinet.

If the Pirate Party were to leave the government, the government would still be able to maintain a majority in the parliament.  The Pirates have a mere four legislators in the parliament, so Fiala’s government would still enjoy a majority of 104 in the parliament of 200 legislators.

Fiala, leader of the neoliberal Civic Democrats (ODS), announced he would dismiss Minister of Regional Development and Deputy Prime Minister for digitalization Ivan Bartos because of a fiasco over the new digital process for applying for building permits, an aspect of the business environment where Czechia has long ranked among the worst in the European Union. He announced that he will ask the Pirate party to nominate Bartos’ successor.

Fiala’s move came just a day after Bartos resigned as Pirate party chairman following a devastating defeat his party suffered at last weekend's regional elections.

Fiala's move to kick Bartos while he is down appears to have backfired as the Pirate party base openly blames the Pirates’ presence in Fiala’s centre-right government for its election debacle, which saw the number of their regional deputies shrink from 99 to a mere three. Pirate Party legislators and ministers said that his move means that Fiala’s cabinet in its current shape “has ended”.

Fiala has blamed Bartos for the unsuccessful digitalization of building permits in the country. “Following the discussion of the analysis of the digital building permits at the cabinet [session] last Wednesday and after today’s morning talk with Ivan Bartos I have unfortunately become certain that he is not managerially capable of completing this digitalisation to a successful end,” Fiala told Czech media on September 24.

“And I think he is not even admitting to himself the real state of affairs of the digitalisation building permits,” added Fiala, who added that his ODS party colleague, Minister of Transportation Martin Kupka will take over the digitalisation project.

Czechia has a terrible record of sitting at the bottom of the international ranking in terms of ease of obtaining a building permit, with complex project approvals taking between three to seven years.  

The dreadlocked Bartos then later attacked Fiala, a very straight former university rector, despite earlier saying that the Pirates were not leaving the government

“If I were to use one word to describe the morning meeting, then it was a sting lacking human decency,” Bartos said at a press conference, explaining that Fiala told him of his move by phone only half an hour ahead of the public announcement.

Pirate Party legislator Jakub Michalek said that Fiala was pressured into ejecting Bartos from the cabinet by the eurosceptic wing of ODS, which is preparing the ground for a grand coalition with the opposition populist ANO party of billionaire ex-Prime Minister Andrej Babis after the national elections next year.

ANO has dominated polls for well over a year with more than 30% popularity and it handed Fiala’s coalition a second successive defeat this weekend at the regional elections following its June victory in the elections to the European Parliament. There has long been speculation that ANO and ODS might form a coalition after the next election.

Fiala denied Michalek’s allegation on his X account, describing it as “disinformation” and doubling down on his statement about Bartos’ “inability to solve digitalisation of building permits”.

Pirate MP Olga Richterova called Fiala “a weak premier who succumbed to godfathers,” pointing at the way the ODS party is allegedly still under the sway of corrupt powerbrokers.

Fiala has long struggled to change the ODS's reputation for corruption.  Minister of Justice Pavel Blazek, a key ODS powerbroker, has been repeatedly called to step down by anti-corruption NGOs amid allegations over his meddling in criminal cases involving his ODS party colleagues, and his meeting with a pro-Kremlin lobbyist last year.