The state of the president was stable, reported the Czech media at noon. Miloš Zeman, the President of the Czech Republic, and his health have been closely followed by the public for years. On Sunday morning he had received the incumbent Prime Minister Andrej Babiš in his residence in Lány Castle to talk to him about the result of the parliamentary elections. Then an ambulance had brought the 77-year-old president to a Prague clinic, where he is in the intensive care unit. The ballot box had previously been carried into the castle for the president, who is dependent on a wheelchair. In the Czech Republic there are now growing concerns that the president’s illness may delay the formation of a government.
The president must give the mandate to form a government. The term of office for the current parliament expires on October 21, and the new parliament must meet 30 days after the election. Senate President Miloš Vystrčil seems the whole situation too uncertain, he now wants to make preparations. “The fact that the state of the president is stable does not say anything about whether he can exercise his office,” he said in a radio interview with Czech radio. The responsible commission of the Senate should discuss next week how to proceed. The Senate could also release the president from his duties. “We cannot afford to paralyze state institutions,” tweeted Senator Zdeněk Hraba.
Opposition leader Petr Fiala, who now wants to become the new prime minister, is calm. There was still time, he was waiting for the president to return. Meanwhile, intensive talks are already taking place among the five parties who now want to form the government together. They had already asked President Zeman to receive Fiala. Before the election, however, Zeman had repeatedly questioned the legality of the electoral alliances in which the parties had stood together. Zeman had said that it was “fraud” and clearly sided with Babiš. Andrej Babiš’s party, Ano, as a single party actually received the most votes – but cannot form a majority.
The Pirate Party is believed to have been the victim of Babiš’s disinformation campaign
Babiš has now announced that he wants to take up his mandate. As a member of the opposition, he wanted to see whether Fiala kept his promises. He told his followers on Facebook again that it was “an absolute miracle” that his party Ano had only lost about 2.5 percentage points compared to 2017 – after “all the inventions and lies they spread about us”. Babiš also described the Pandora Papers as a targeted campaign against him, which suggests that the billionaire and entrepreneur laundered money by buying real estate.
However, all observers agree that the Pirate Party was a victim of the disinformation campaign launched by Babiš. The pirates had committed themselves to uncovering Babiš’s financial affairs early on and were ahead of the polls in the spring. After the election, however, they now only have four seats instead of the previous 22. “The Ano succeeded in connecting topics with the pirates that a large part of the population perceives negatively – such as migration or the inability to defend Czech values,” explains Alžběta Králová from the Institute for Political Marketing in Prague. Specifically, the Ano had claimed that the pirates were in favor of billeting refugees in the homes of the locals.
Even in the desired five-party alliance, the positions of the pirates are too radical for some members. The alliance would have a majority even without the pirates. But Petr Fiala made it clear on Monday: “This is not our way.”