■ You've been hesitant about running for a long time.

You said your wife's approval was decisive. What did you convince her of? I didn't convince her. She told me, if you want to do this, go ahead. If she had said no, I would have respected it, because I knew from the time when I was minister, that the burden of looking after five sons was great.■ After last year's congress a year ago, you bitterly refused to run for vice-president. Have you absorbed it? I wasn't upset that I lost, but because of the form of criticism of Mark Excellent.■ That he criticized you for his time with Babiš? He was talking about biofuels, but everyone can easily find out that after taxing biofuels the state saved over two billion and that Preolu (part of Agrofert) has significantly lost profit.■ How do you want to increase preferences for people? Or are you going on a suicide mission? I certainly don't want to be a kamikaze. I'd like to bounce back from the five percent limit and get into a safe zone of about seven or eight percent. The party would regain confidence, and members wouldn't think about going to the candidates. We will gain more people's trust when they feel that we stand for an honest working person not only now, but also in the future. The politics of the current government are trying to improve people's lives – higher pensions or fare discounts – but he lives on debt and puts his head in the sand from major problems.■ People appreciate that the government has improved their lives now, and they don't think so much about the future, as Babiš probably thinks about it. Evaluate. Almost all of us are a parent, and they want their children to get better, and that's why they're thinking about the future. They appreciate investment in education, infrastructure. The state should save on unnecessary agendas, digitise or better monitor capital contributions. Then he would have the money for these priorities.■ You said you wanted to fight for pensioners. How much is the political calculus of winning a large voter group? It's a strong voter group, we understand. Andrej Babiš knows why he is adding across the board, and he does not have a job to say that some groups would need to add more. He has the biggest shot, but it is necessary to admit that moms who have raised a generation who earn skilled pensions are punished for having a smaller pension. We proposed a solution a year ago, the government rejected it until now it started talking about it again.■ Who do you want to take the voters to? We need to reach out to ods, top 09, stan and yes voters. Not only pensioners, but also young people who deal with housing. YES has a sixth year of local development and housing affordability has not improved. If I were chairman of the KDU-ČSL, this is the case where I would go to Andrej Babiš and say, stop talking about it and let's talk about it. I have tried that on topics that can resonatory with the media and the public, he is willing to cooperate.■ Under what conditions would you go to government with Andrej Babiš? It's still true that we're only going to government with people who aren't burdened. For me, prosecution is still a problem. I don't want to say the terms right now, it will have to be assessed in a particular situation.■ Is it realistic to negotiate a pre-election coalition with TOP 09, STAN and ods, or is it just wishful thinking? I have experience with stan's coalition. We had a noble goal, but we came across the technical and legislative limits of the Electoral Act and the Party Funding Act. The people who challenged us to letná do not realize that. I'm not naïve anymore, and I don't want to give people hope. If the laws fail to change, the coalition won't succeed. Is it only possible to do a project where one party supports the other and runs for their candidates, as the Mayors with TOP 09 did.■ Would you go for that? He forgot his mark and ran for example. on the ODS roster? For me, cooperation with ods is a big question mark because of the program and its past, which can not be overlooked just because it is led by Petr Fiala. I can only imagine someone running for the KDU-ČSL candidate. We need to reach out to ods, top 09, stan and yes voters.