Billionaire populist Andrej Babis’ party wins Czech parliamentary election

Billionaire businessman Andrej Babis won parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic, although his populist ANO party fell short of an overall majority, preliminary results show.

At current predictions, ANO received just under 35% of the vote, earning them 81 seats in the 200-seat lower house.

Babis – who served as prime minister from 2017 to 2021 – is expected to be invited to lead talks on forming a new coalition.

This election has thrown up no great surprises, but leaves plenty of questions.

Few believed the current centre-right coalition would survive. Few had any doubt Babis would emerge in first place. Few believed he would win enough seats to govern alone.

All of those predictions – borne out by every opinion poll over the past two years – have come to pass.

That’s the easy part. But what comes next?
Babis will begin talks immediately – perhaps as early as tonight – with the two small right-wing eurosceptic parties that managed to pass the 5% threshold: the anti-Green Deal Motorists for Themselves, and the anti-immigrant Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party, led by the Czech-Japanese entrepreneur Tomio Okamura.

It appears Babis will need an alliance with both to form a majority government.

ANO will have most in common with the Motorists. The two already sit in the same European Parliament group – the “pro-sovereignty” Patriots for Europe, which Babis founded alongside Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Austria’s Herbert Kickl last year.

ANO shares the Motorists’ misgivings about the EU’s emissions targets, and vows to modify or reject them outright.

Both parties are firmly against Czech households carrying a greater financial burden for cleaner energy, and both oppose the EU’s ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars after 2035.

Relations with the SPD could be more fraught.

For a start, SPD fought this election in a formal alliance with a number of fringe parties on the far-right, meaning they will have to yield some of their seats to them. And Okamura may not have full control of the MPs in his caucus – always a recipe for disaster in coalition politics.

Babis has also categorically ruled out allowing a referendum on either EU or NATO membership – a key policy priority for the SPD.

The ANO leader leaned into anti-Ukrainian rhetoric in the final days of the campaign, lambasting the centre-right government for giving “Czech mothers nothing, and Ukrainians everything”.

But Okamura’s call for Ukrainian refugees to be deported en masse will likely fall on deaf ears.

Ultimately Babis may decide to govern alone, in a minority cabinet propped up by the Motorists and the SPD.

By BBC News