A populist billionaire at odds with the European Union who featured in the Pandora Papers was tipped to win Czech elections which started on Friday and looks set to be a tight race.
Prime Minister Andrej Babis is 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.
Last weekend, the Pandora Papers investigation showed 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 peg the former communist as the election favourite, with support reaching up to 30 percent.
Voting at a Prague school on a sunny Friday afternoon, teacher Jakub Kratochvil told AFP 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.
Polling stations will close at 2000 GMT on Friday before voting resumes at 0600 GMT on Saturday and ends at 1200 GMT. The results are expected later on Saturday.
“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.
– ‘Textbook populism’ –
Babis’s main rivals are two groupings, one comprising the anti-establishment Pirate Party with the centrist Mayors and Independents, and the other being a three-party centre-right coalition called Together.
Babis leads a minority government with the left-wing Social Democrats, tacitly backed by the Communist Party 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 said.
“He basically says — you can have anything, high wages and pensions, and don’t worry about the state debt,” he told AFP.
– Communists out? –
The Czech economy, heavily dependent on car 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.
But the pandemic and increases in pensions and public sector wages, recently approved by Babis’s 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.
In its campaign, ANO took on illegal migration and pledged to preserve cars running on petrol.
Other parties to reckon with include the anti-Muslim far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) movement led by Tokyo-born entrepreneur Tomio Okamura.
The Social Democrats and the Communists are in play, but they may fail to reach the five percent threshold for parliament entry, according to recent polls.
“I want a government that will not run a debt, and I want the Communists to be ousted,” pensioner Zdena Svobodova told AFP outside a Prague polling station.
It will be up to the pro-Russian President Milos Zeman to tap the new prime minister, and Babis can rely on his old ally.
“He will do his best to keep ANO in power,” said Josef Mlejnek, an analyst at Charles University in Prague.
