Bluffing for democracy

About 250,000 people attended each of the two main demonstrations of the Million Moments for Democracy civic group last year, and 438,500 have signed the "Moment for Andrej Babiš's Resignation" petition. If the group founded a political party and were able to convert these 440,000 signatories into votes, it would land smack dab between where SPD (538,574) and the Communists (393,100) were in the 2017 parliamentary elections. That would give Million Moments about 17 seats in Parliament. But Chair Mikuláš Minář told Právo a year ago that if Million Moments became a political party and started to have concrete opinions, it would lose two-thirds of its supporters. That would theoretically bring it down to 146,500 votes, which is between where STAN (262,157) and Svobodní (79,229) were in Oct. 2017, and far below the 5% threshold. In this light, Minář's recent flirtation with founding a party reads like a political bluff that lacks the substance to back it up.