A populist billionaire at odds with the EU who featured in the Pandora Papers was tipped to win tight two-day Czech elections as the first day of voting ended on Friday.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis was seeking a second straight victory for his populist ANO party, despite his lukewarm handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and his brushes with the law.
The 67-year-old food, chemicals and media mogul is facing police charges over alleged EU subsidy fraud and the bloc’s dismay over his conflict of interest as a businessman and a politician.
Photo: AP
Last weekend, the Pandora Papers investigation showed that he had used money from his offshore firms to finance the purchase of property in southern France in 2009, including a chateau.
He slammed the allegations as a smear campaign, and opinion polls still pegged the former communist as the election favorite, with support reaching up to 30 percent.
Voting at a Prague school on a sunny Friday afternoon, teacher Jakub Kratochvil told reporters that he wanted change.
“I want Babis to quit. I want a more transparent democracy, I want to get rid of his criminal cases, and I want international respect for us. It has been a shame so far,” he said.
Another Prague voter, Alexandr Slaby, also called for a replacement, saying laws adopted by the Babis government were “obviously tailored to his needs and those of his companies rather than the people.”
However, as he cast his ballot in the northern town of Lovosice, Babis called for “stability for this unstable period.”
“We should not change the government now,” he said.
Polling stations opened at 8am yesterday and were to close at 2pm, with the results expected later in the day.
“The key question is whether the populist policy will prevail over traditional and more responsible politicians,” said Tomas Lebeda, an analyst at Palacky University in the eastern city of Olomouc.
Babis’ main rivals were two groupings, one comprising the anti-establishment Pirate Party with the centrist Mayors and Independents, and the other being a three-party center-right coalition called Together.
Babis leads a minority government with the left-wing Social Democrats, tacitly backed by the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, which ruled the former totalitarian Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1989.
“ANO pursues the type of populism we know from textbooks — a strong leader seeking to split society and create a tribal identity,” Lebeda told reporters.
The Czech economy, heavily dependent on auto production and exports to the eurozone which the EU member of 10.7 million is yet to join, is on the mend after the COVID-19 lockdowns.
However, the pandemic and increases in pensions and public sector wages, recently approved by Babis’ Cabinet, have made the public finance gap soar.
“He has extremely burdened the state budget to hand out the perks and he keeps saying he won’t raise taxes. I would call this fiscal populism,” Lebeda said.
Other parties to reckon with included the anti-Muslim far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy movement led by Tokyo-born entrepreneur Tomio Okamura.
The Social Democrats and the Communists were in play, but they might fail to reach the 5 percent threshold for parliament entry, according to polls.
“I want a government that will not run a debt, and I want the Communists to be ousted,” Prague voter Zdena Svobodova said.
It would be up to Czech President Milos Zeman, Babis’ old ally, to tap the new prime minister.
“He will do his best to keep ANO in power,” said Josef Mlejnek, an analyst at Charles University in Prague.
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