Jan Kasl

Jan Kasl (born December 31 1951) is a Czech politician and former Mayor of the City of Prague and one of the leaders of SNK European Democrats.

Biography

Kasl was born in 1951 in Prague. He studied architecture at the Czech Technical University in Prague from 1970 to 1976. After graduation he worked as an architect for cooperative housing enterprise. After Velvet revolution he founded his own architectural company, that he left after he became mayor of Prague in 1998.

He is married for the second time with journalist Terezie Jungrová, his former media consultant and granddaughter of Ferdinand Peroutka. He has three daughters from his first marriage and two grandchildren.

Political career

After the Velvet revolution he entered local politics in the Prague. He was elected in 1990 into city council for Civic Forum. After break-up of Civic Forum he became member of Civic Democratic Party. Over end of its term in city council he left politics. He returned to politics in 1998, when became a mayor of Prague. In 2002 he resigned and left Civic Democratic Party a few weeks before parliamentary elections, because he thought that party is not able to deal with corruption. Few moths after he found its own party "European Democrats" (also called "Democrats of Jan Kasl"), now merged into SNK European Democrats. Two months after 2006 parliamentary elections (in which party won 2.1 % of the vote but no seats) he decided to leave or at least take a break in his political career.