Ondřej Kolář (politician)

Ondřej Kolář (born 13 March 1984) is a Czech politician and lawyer who has been a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic since 2021. He was mayor of the Prague 6 district from 2014 until 2022. According to the Phoenix Research survey, Kolář was the second-most popular mayor of Prague in 2017.

Early life
Kolář was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He is the son of Czech diplomat Petr Kolář. He has lived in Norway, Sweden, and the Republic of Ireland. After returning to the Czech Republic, Kolář studied media studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University and law at the University of West Bohemia. He also completed the international legal theories Program at American University Washington College of Law and one year of German studies at Trinity College Dublin. In 2011, Kolář started working as secretary to the chairman of TOP 09 and then-foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg.

Political career
In April 2017, Prague City Hall paid 50,000 CZK for Kolář's interview in the men's magazine Playboy, which did not escape the attention of the media.

On 13 May 2017, Kolář attended the unveiling of the foundation stone of the future monument to Maria Theresa of Habsburg in Hradčany, stating: "Marie Theresa is the only woman who ever sat on the Czech throne, and therefore she deserves such a monument." The commission for the statue of Maria Theresa by Prague 6 cost almost 4,000,000 CZK.

On 18 April 2018, Kolář filed a criminal complaint against himself, stating: "As soon as we approved in the council in 2016, the termination of the disadvantageous contract by which Prague 6 releases Poliklinika Pod Marjánkou to a private individual, we were criticised that the termination was poorly-executed that we paid severance pay without authorization."

Kolář arose the initiative to add an information board to the monument to Soviet Marshal Konev in Prague 6. The ambassadors of Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan objected to the plaque. According to Embassy of Russia, Prague, Konev did not take part in the invasion in 1968 and, due to his age, had already left commanding positions in the armed forces of the USSR.

In August 2019, Kolář declared that he sympathized with the vandals who painted and poured red paint on the monument to Marshal Konev in Prague, and would not let the statue be cleaned.

2021 Czech parliamentary election
In the 2021 Czech parliamentary election, Kolář ran as a member of TOP 09 in the fourth place candidate of the Spolu coalition in Prague. Thanks to 27,259 preferential votes, he finally finished fifth and became a member of parliament.