Politico: Czech parliament confirms Babiš minority government

The coalition nearly fell apart last month when President Miloš Zeman rejected the Social Democrats’ choice for foreign minister, Miroslav Poche, because of his support of migrant quotas. Social Democratic chairman Jan Hamáček, who is also interior minister, will temporarily fill the post. [...]

On the other hand, said Pehe, it could be difficult to topple the ANO-led government because the opposition is not united. “If the Social Democrats leave the coalition, Zeman has sway over the [right-wing extremist Freedom and Direct Democracy party] and the Communists and could convince them that supporting the government is in their best interest because they could lose their influential parliamentary positions agreed with Babiš,” he said. [...]

Not everyone is happy about the coalition deal. Putting the Communists into a position of influence for the first time since 1989, when the Velvet Revolution put an end to 40 years of Communist Party rule, has sparked public protests in the Czech capital as well as political resentment. [...]

The government is also likely to feel heat from the Catholic Church, because one of the Communists’ demands in exchange for supporting the government was a tax on property confiscated by the Communist regime and restituted after the revolution, including churches.

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Jacobin Magazine: The Avoidable Rise of Andrej Babiš

Almost everyone classifies Babiš as a populist, but it’s harder to find someone who can define what that means. Babiš presents himself as a straight-talking man of the people, standing above petty party politics, and he has chimed in with anti-immigrant rhetoric and rejected European Union quotas on migrants. Yet to lump him in with the governments of Poland and Hungary, or the far right in Germany and Austria, stretches the definition of populism beyond meaning. In fact, looking for evidence of this affiliation, a BBC correspondent resorted to commenting on his “handing out donuts at Metro stations.”

Babiš is no ideologue: he is first and foremost a technocrat. He packed his manifesto with language that describes challenging corruption and building a smaller, more efficient, and more transparent government. He wants to introduce e-government, citing Qatar as a model, and he wants to grow the number of professionals and businessmen who participate in civil service, increasing wages to compete with the private sector. The words “transparent” and “understandable” appear throughout this platform, and his campaign presented him as man of action, opposed to other politicians’ “blah-blah-blahing.” [...]

But this hardly amounts to root and branch opposition. Indeed, the European Union has helped make Babiš very rich, and members of ANO already sit in the European Parliament as part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. One of them even serves as commissioner for justice, consumers, and gender equality. That few news outlets have commented on this reflects how distorted European politics look when seen through the prism of centrism against populism. [...]

Although Babiš himself is nowhere near as hostile to the European Union as some suggest, anti-European sentiment clearly played a big part in this election. Although few outside the SPD seriously want to leave, TOP 09, the only party that openly campaigned in favor of the EU, barely scraped past the 5 percent threshold.  

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Politico: Million dollar Babiš

The result is something of a slap in the face for Brussels. Not only has Babiš opposed EU-mandated immigrant quotas and repeatedly accused Brussels of “meddling,” but the ODS has also been firmly anti-EU since the days of its founder, the famously Euroskeptic former Prime Minister and President Václav Klaus. [...]

The upstart Pirates, a pro-EU party, finished a surprise third with 10.79 percent of the vote. A vigorous campaign by popular YouTube vloggers urging young voters to go to the polls appears to have borne fruit for the party of digital enthusiasts, which also wants more direct democracy. The Pirates did well in every region in the country. [...]

“So, even Babiš, who appears to be very Euroskeptical, will have to modify his views because he cannot run a successful economy — as he promises to do — without being fully integrated with the rest of the European Union. Not to mention that some of the companies that are in his [Agrofert] empire are in Germany, Switzerland, France.” [...]

That is important to Babiš both politically and personally. He was charged with defrauding the EU of a €2 million subsidy after the Czech parliament stripped him of immunity in September. As a newly elected deputy, he will again be immune from prosecution — unless there is a new vote and he is stripped of his immunity again.

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Politico: Prague poised to turn away from Brussels

Recent polls predict the maverick ANO movement and its founder, former Finance Minister Andrej Babiš, will be the election’s biggest winner with some 25 percent of the vote. Support for Babiš is largely due to his vow to fight political corruption — despite the fact he currently faces charges of subsidy fraud. But he has also denounced EU-imposed migrant quotas and “EU meddling” in Czech politics. [...]

Czech voters are deeply skeptical about both the euro and the EU project itself. According to a 2017 survey by the Czech Public Opinion Research Center, only 18 percent of Czechs “strongly agree” the country should be a member of the bloc, while 38 percent “somewhat agree” — by far the lowest support for EU membership among members of the so-called Visegrad Group of Central European nations, which also includes Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. Another poll by the same organization found that only 21 percent of Czechs are in favor of adopting the euro. [...]

Other party leaders have kept the door open to governing with ANO — while insisting they do not want Babiš to be prime minister. But Babiš has repeatedly insisted that he will not let someone else take the reins if ANO wins the most seats in parliament, and there is no obvious alternative candidate within his party for the premiership. He also has an ally in President Miloš Zeman, who is likely to throw his weight behind a coalition headed by the ANO leader.

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Politico: Czech center left realigns with ‘pork-and-cabbage’ voters

The Social Democrats — who head a three-party ruling coalition — suffered a heavy blow when Andrej Babiš’ populist ANO movement outperformed them in a number of key regions in 2016. The ČSSD’s share of the vote slipped to 15.4 percent from more than 20 percent, and its support now stands at 12-14 percent in polls.

Now, in an effort to reclaim lost ground in October’s parliamentary election, the party is trying to capitalize on domestic anti-European and anti-immigrant sentiment, which Babiš and President Miloš Zeman continue to successfully exploit. [...]

This threatens to exacerbate a growing East-West divide in the EU, as the four Central European nations move toward a two-speed Union in which they take the slow lane. This specter was raised by Zeman last week when, in response to the European Court of Justice’s rejection of Slovakia and Hungary’s challenge to the migrant quotas, he said: “If worse comes to worse, then it would be better to forego EU subsidies than open the door to migrants.” [...]

According to a poll by the CVVM institute conducted in spring, 61 percent of Czechs are against accepting additional refugees, while nearly three in four said migrants pose as great a threat to national security as ISIS. The country has so far accepted only 12 of its allocated quota of 2,691 immigrants.

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Politico: Czech president fires finance minister, ending political crisis

Czech President Miloš Zeman on Wednesday fired his controversial finance minister, Andrej Babiš, putting an end to a government crisis that threatened to shatter the ruling coalition government just months before scheduled legislative elections. [...]

Zeman acted nearly two weeks after Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka demanded that the president sack Babiš, whom he accused of tax evasion and other financial improprieties. After seemingly incriminating audio tapes were posted on the internet, Babiš was also accused of trying to manipulate the news in the two national dailies he owns through a trust. [...]

Pilný is a member of Babiš’s ANO party, which rules in a three-party coalition with Sobotka’s Social Democrats and the centrist Christian Democrats. He is widely regarded as something of a political maverick and is not seen as being close to his predecessor and party chairman. He was the head of Microsoft’s Czech operations in the 1990s and, until his promotion to minister, chairman of the economic affairs committee in the lower house of parliament.

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Politico: Czech finance minister ready to take one for the team

But Babiš, who spoke in English and French, said he would allow Zeman to fire him on one condition: that Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka accepts that his replacement will be someone from Babiš’s centrist ANO party.

Sobotka, the head of the Social Democrat party, and a majority of Czech parliamentary deputies have demanded that the president sack Babiš because of allegations of financial improprieties, including that he benefited illegally from a 2012 purchase of tax-exempt bonds issued by his conglomerate Agrofert, the source of his wealth. Babiš denies these allegations. [...]

Babiš has also faced allegations of conflict of interest involving his wide business interests and the use of EU funds for his firms during his time as finance minister. In January, the Czech parliament passed a law banning government ministers from owning media firms and more than a quarter of any company bidding for state contracts or receiving EU subsidies. A few weeks later, Babiš placed all his business holdings into a trust. [...]

In three audio recordings posted on the Internet, Babiš can be heard insulting other ministers and apparently discussing the planting of news stories that would be damaging to Interior Minister Milan Chovanec and Minister of Health Miloslav Ludvík, both members of Sobotka’s Social Democratic party. In the latest recording, a journalist from Mlada fronta Dnes is heard offering to publish information from an ongoing police investigation and discussing with Babiš the timing of the proposed leak.

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