Pirates Chair Ivan Bartoš, who was reelected to his position on Sat. with 70% of the vote, said in his campaign speech that the Pirates had many successes in the past but suffered a significant setback in the Oct. parliamentary elections. "Many of the mistakes were quite objectively mine as the leader," he said, "even if I gave my all to the job." Objectively speaking, the failure of Bartoš as the leader to prevent the STAN mayor's group from using the preferential-voting system to swipe most of the Pirates' seats in Parliament was one of the biggest mistakes ever made in Czech politics. It was a colossal error to underestimate the diabolical cleverness of former investment banker Věslav Michalik and his lobbyist friend Radek Pokorný. Bartoš wasn't even able to react in time to the warning provided by Daniel Křetínský's Blesk tabloid, which gave its readers exact instructions one week before the elections about how to "circle out" the Pirates. After more than a decade on the political scene, the Pirates are still rank amateurs who will be taken to the cleaners again and again unless they wise up to the ways of the world.