The center-right alliance Ensemble narrowly won the parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic on Saturday, according to almost complete results. The first results had however granted the victory to the billionaire populist Prime Minister Andrej Babis. After more than 99.9% of the votes were counted, Ensemble obtained 27.78% of the vote, while the ANO populist movement of Babis collected 27.14%. According to analysts, this turnaround is due to the fact that ballots for voters in major cities were counted at the end.
An anti-establishment Pirate Party alliance with the Mayors and Independents (STAN) movement won 15% of the vote. The two alliances would be able to form a majority in the 200-seat parliament, together obtaining 103 seats against 75 for ANO, according to a projection on Czech television.
Accused of alleged fraud to European grants
A potential partner for ANO could be the far-right, anti-Muslim Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) movement, led by Tokyo-born businessman Tomio Okamura, which won 10% of the vote. With almost all the ballots counted, the turnout had reached 65%, compared to 60.84% in the previous parliamentary elections in 2017.
67-year-old agribusiness, chemicals and media mogul Andrej Babis accused of alleged EU subsidy fraud and EU accuses him of conflict of interest between his roles as a businessman and politician. Last weekend, the international Pandora Papers investigation revealed that it had used money from its offshore companies to finance the purchase of properties in the south of France in 2009, including a castle. Babis has rejected all these allegations in which he sees a smear campaign against him.
Andrej Babis currently heads a minority government with the Social Democrats, tacitly backed by the Communist Party which ruled the former totalitarian Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1989. The Communists on Saturday scored below the five percent eligibility threshold, which means they will be excluded from Parliament for the first time since World War II. It will be up to pro-Russian President Milos Zeman to appoint the new prime minister. But Milos Zeman suffers from health issues that have confined him to his residence for the vote, and according to local media he may even have trouble appointing the prime minister.