Marek Sovka is the mayor of Branišovice in the Brno area and deputy governor of the South Moravian Region. Until October 2026 he was chairman of the regional organisation of TOP 09.

On 20 October 2026 he announced at a briefing in Brno that he was leaving TOP 09 and joining KDU-ČSL, led by governor Jan Grolich. According to Sovka, about thirty people will leave the party, and some of them plan to join KDU-ČSL. Among those leaving is regional councillor Michal Doležel. Petr Novotný, the mayor of Letovice in the Blansko area, is also leaving. [5] TOP 09 has four councillors in the regional assembly; all of them are moving to the KDU-ČSL caucus and three of them are joining the party. According to Grolich, about 470 members have joined KDU-ČSL since the April congress, while TOP 09 has more than 1,700 members and KDU-ČSL around 18,000; according to the Czech News Agency, political scientists recall that when TOP 09 was founded in 2009, roughly 270 KDU-ČSL members moved over to it. [5]

Sovka explained his decision by saying that he had joined TOP 09 as a party competent in managing the state’s finances, but that the time had come to move on. He also said that the departing members want to continue to promote budget responsibility and economic competence. The chairman of TOP 09, Matěj Ondřej Havel, called the departure a coordinated action that had been prepared for some time. Havel wants to close the matter, claims that TOP 09 remains strong in the south of Moravia, and sees the dispute as benefiting only Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. [5] Grolich welcomed the decision. Grolich described the arrival of the new members as a natural continuation of cooperation at the regional level, denied that he was luring anyone away, and said that the members were leaving because of dissatisfaction with how TOP 09 operates. [6]

Sovka is thirty-two years old and has been active in municipal and regional politics in South Moravia since the age of eighteen; he has been mayor of Branišovice since 2018, was re-elected to the municipal council in the 2026 municipal elections, and was among those who founded the South Moravian branch of the youth organisation TOP tým. [4]

He was elected a regional councillor in 2024 for TOP 09 in the Spolu coalition, and in the regional leadership he is responsible for regional development and for coordinating preparations for the construction of a new unit of the Dukovany Nuclear Power Station. [4]

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Sources

  1. ČTK / České noviny — 20 October 2026
  2. iDNES.cz — 20 October 2026
  3. Deník: Jihomoravský kraj — 20 October 2026
  4. Novinky.cz — 20 October 2026
  5. ČTK / České noviny — 20 October 2026
  6. Blesk.cz — 20 October 2026
  7. FORUM 24 — 20 October 2026
  8. Deník: Jihomoravský kraj — 21 October 2026
  9. iDNES.cz — 20 October 2026