Prime Minister Andrej Babiš narrowly lost the parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic. After almost all votes have been counted, the opposition can no longer gain the lead on Saturday evening. Two electoral alliances were against Babiš and his populist party Ano (Alliance of Dissatisfied Citizens). Even before the election, the two alliances had made it clear that they wanted to form a government coalition.
Together they now have 109 seats out of the 200 seats in parliament. Unlike Babiš – who led a minority government for four years together with the Social Democrats and tolerated by the Communists – the previous opposition parties now have a clear majority.
“The change is here,” said Spolu’s top candidate Petr Fiala at the press conference in Prague. “We promised it and we will carry it out.” The 57-year-old politics professor from Brno can now hope to become the new Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. Fiala was Minister of Education between 2012 and 2013 and has led the opposition with his ODS party for the past four years. His party is closer to the CSU than the CDU, he explained in an interview with the SZ some time ago.
The center-left alliance and the conservative party now want to form a coalition
In terms of content, it is thus far apart from its chosen coalition partner: The Pirate Party had forged a center-left alliance with the mayor’s party Stan. The pirates stand for an early coal phase-out in 2033, for social and transparent politics. Spolu is more in favor of market liberalism and a conservative family image. But both alliances had declared that Babiš had to be replaced.
It was the pirates who, together with Transparency International, initiated the investigation into the prime minister’s conflict of interest as an entrepreneur. Before entering politics in 2011, Babiš had already founded several companies for which he received EU subsidies, among other things. He outsourced the shares in the companies to two trust funds. However, the EU Commission had come to the conclusion that he still had a decisive influence on them.
“Spolu” means “together”, while the name of Babiš’s party Ano means “yes” in Czech. Many voters had posted on the Internet that they would now say “no”. The turnout of almost 65.5 percent was five percentage points higher than in 2017. Perhaps also a success of the organization’s sustained campaign “A million moments for democracy”. It was founded in 2018 in response to the Babiš government. In 2019 she organized the largest demonstrations in the Czech Republic since 1989.
In the weeks leading up to the election, volunteers from the organization had held thousands of conversations on the streets. “We talked to people about democracy and why Babiš is a danger to them,” explains SZ chairman Benjamin Roll. After all, “One Million Moments” openly supported the two electoral alliances and, above all, called for votes.
The right-wing SPD, which spread xenophobic slogans, denied the corona pandemic and announced a referendum on leaving the EU, lost votes. It was feared that Babiš could bring this party into the government in the absence of other partners. The Social Democrats did not make it into parliament and, for the first time since their founding in 1921, the Communists as well.
A few days before the vote are in connection with the publication of the so-called Pandora Papers – a Data leak that SZ, NDR and WDR evaluated together with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) – Also personal business of the head of government in tax havens became known.