This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/22/anti-establishment-billionaire-andrej-babis-to-be-named-czech-pm

The article has changed 4 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Anti-establishment billionaire Andrej Babiš to be named Czech PM Anti-establishment billionaire Andrej Babiš to be named Czech PM
(1 day later)
The Czech president, Miloš Zeman, has said he will name Andrej Babiš as prime minister, but the tycoon leader of the anti-establishment ANO party may struggle to find coalition partners despite his emphatic election win. One of central Europe’s richest men will begin the tricky task of building a ruling coalition after convincing Czech voters in weekend elections that he can stem immigration, fight corruption and banish the establishment from power.
ANO won 29.6% of the vote in the election on Friday and Saturday, nearly three times as much as its closest rival, but many parties expressed reluctance about forming a coalition with it while Babiš fights off fraud charges, or rejected the idea outright. Andrej Babiš, a tycoon turned populist politician who has been compared to Donald Trump and Silvio Berlusconi, confirmed on Monday that the Czech president would ask him next week to begin forming the next government.
Zeman said the charges were not an obstacle to Babiš to becoming prime minister. The tycoon is the second richest person in the Czech Republic, and has been compared to other tycoons turned political leaders such as Donald Trump and Silvio Berlusconi. Babiš led his new party ANO “ano” is Czech for “yes” to a resounding poll victory, winning almost 30% of the vote.
“My aim is that when I appoint the prime minister, and that will be Andrej Babiš, that there is certainty or at least high probability that this prime minister will be successful in a parliamentary vote of confidence,” Zeman said in a live interview on the news website Blesk.cz. The election ended a quarter of a century of political dominance by the traditional parties of the Czech mainstream, with the Social and Christian Democrats scoring just 7% and 6% respectively.
ANO will control 78 seats in the 200-seat lower house, so it will need partners from the other eight factions to form a majority, but Babiš’s stance as an anti-establishment force has made it difficult to forge alliances. Voters largely turned their backs on liberal pro-European parties, with the centre-right Civic Democrats winning 11% of the vote, the direct democracy advocates of the Pirate party 10.6% and the far-right, anti–EU SPD 10.8%.
Opponents see Babiš, who is worth an estimated $4bn (£3.4bn), as a danger to democracy because of his commanding leadership style and his business and media power, which they fear could pose conflicts of interest. “We’ll do our utmost to persuade any other party to join us,” Babiš said on Monday. Both the mainstream centre-right and centre-left parties, however, have already ruled themselves out of any coalition, and not just because his abrasive style and confrontational policies have alienated many of their leading members.
Police allege Babiš hid ownership of one of his firms a decade ago to receive a €2m EU subsidy that was meant for small businesses. He denies wrongdoing. Many are reluctant to ally themselves with a self-styled anti-corruption campaigner who is himself mired in allegations of fraud. There are also questions about whether Babiš would enjoy immunity from prosecution if he were able to form a government.
He moved his chemicals, food and media firms to a trust this year when he held the job of finance minister, to meet conflict of interest legislation. Babiš is a bundle of contradictions: a self-proclaimed anti-establishment figure who is a former finance minister, billionaire and media mogul and an anti-corruption campaigner who this month was charged with a €2m (£1.8m) fraud. Babiš denies wrongdoing and has dismissed the case as politically motivated.
The centre-right Civic Democrats, who came second in the election with 25 seats, said they would remain in opposition. “I have already ruled out talks with ANO on taking part in a government or supporting a government,” the party chief, Petr Fiala, said on Seznam.cz. While Babiš presents himself as a self-made man, the source of his riches is rooted in the days that followed the country’s 1989 Velvet Revolution and the subsequent breakup of Czechoslovakia.
Two small centre-right parties, STAN and TOP09, also said they would not work with Babiš. “I can’t legitimise him and create the appearance of normality,” Jan Farsky, the election leader for STAN, told Reuters. “Democratic forces got trounced but they will not regain strength by cooperation with Babiš. That would finish them off.” It was during this chaotic period that Babiš wrested control of a previously state-owned conglomerate through the most opaque of refinancing deals. His role within the pre-revolutionary state is also unclear: he firmly denies allegations that he was close to the StB, the Communist-era secret police. Despite his best efforts, however including multiple courtroom battles the allegations of collaboration will not go away.
The centre-left Social Democrats of the outgoing prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, who won just 7.3% of the vote, said they may enter talks with ANO, their current coalition partner, but only if Babiš stayed out of the cabinet. What is clear is that Babiš has struck a powerful chord with many Czech voters, particularly in rural areas where people warm to his scepticism about the power of Brussels and his no-nonsense style.
The centrist Christian Democrats, the third current coalition partner, also made any potential support conditional on Babiš not being in the government. The liberal Pirate party, which came third in the election, said Babiš’s charges were obstacle to any cooperation. Many were also impressed by his determination, when finance minister, to get to grips with the national debt, crack down on tax evaders and kickstart much-needed infrastructure projects.
Babiš has promised to keep the Czech Republic out of the eurozone and pressure the EU to reduce immigration, but also to keep the country firmly in the EU and Nato. Unusually for such a populist politician, his victory comes not at a time of economic downturn in the Czech economy but at a moment when the country of 10.6 million people is enjoying strong growth, robust wage increases and low levels of unemployment.
A refusal by mainstream parties to work with ANO could lead Babiš to turn to the Communists and the anti-EU, anti-immigration Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD) for political support. In recent years many Czechs have been far from confident in their country’s economic stability, however, and have come to resent immigration and what they see as cronyism in government and the legal system.
The SPD chief, Tomio Okamura, also said Babiš should stay out of the cabinet. His conditions for talks with the ANO were a tough stance against immigration, a ban on promoting Islam and a referendum on leaving the EU, he said. Babiš, who is estimated by Forbes to have a net worth of $4bn (£3bn), founded ANO (Action of Dissatisfied Citizens) in 2012, saying it was opposed to immigration and committed to eradicating systemic corruption in Czech public life. He seems to regard the party as being inseparable from himself, telling one interviewer: “The party is connected to my person. The party is me.”
The makeup of the cabinet will influence the country’s approach in the EU, but Babiš does not share the anti-liberal stance of Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán that has driven Warsaw and Budapest into deep spats with western partners. One of ANO’s sources of funding has been donations from subsidiaries of Agrofert, an enormous agriculture, foods and chemical conglomerate controlled by Babiš. According to research conducted by a Czech NGO, between 2012 and 2016 more than a dozen Agrofert subsidiaries which had drawn almost 1.4bn Czech koruna (£50m) in EU subsidies between them donated about 31m koruna to ANO.
Zeman said he would meet Babiš on Monday to discuss the next steps, but suggested the formal appointment would happen later. He said he would call the first session of the new parliament after the maximum 30 days allowed by the constitution, to provide time for coalition talks. A year after launching ANO– and months before the 2013 parliamentary election Babiš bought the media group Mafra, the publisher of two of the country’s best selling and most influential newspapers, MF Dnes and Lidové Noviny.
Resignations of senior journalists soon followed, and Babiš was scorned in some Prague circles as Babišconi, a reference to the scandal-tainted former Italian prime minister Berlusconi.
He moved to consolidate his holdings in Czech media, and now owns a major internet news portal and radio and television channels, all of which appear reluctant to criticise him. Babiš insists he never meddles in editorial affairs.
At parliamentary elections that followed, Babiš’ party won 19% of the vote and entered into a coalition government.
Babiš was appointed finance minister and first deputy prime minister, posts that he held until May this year when he was sacked after a long-running coalition dispute over suspicions that he had evaded taxes when buying bonds from Agrofert – an allegation he denies.
Now he has been re-elected, Babiš’ parliamentary immunity will be restored and a second vote would be required in order to remove it once more.
Whether this will happen – and what will happen next in the Czech Republic’s journey from the land of the Velvet Revolution to a home for populist and confrontational politics – may depend on the outcome of the protracted negotiations to form a coalition.
The Czech president, Miloš Zeman, confirmed on Monday he would name Babiš as the next prime minister but suggested the formal appointment would happen later. The first session of the new parliament would be called after the maximum 30 days allowed by the constitution, to provide time for coalition talks, he said.