Parliamentary election: Opposition wins in the Czech Republic

Prime Minister Babis surprisingly lost the election in the Czech Republic with his party. The strongest force was the opposition alliance Spolu – together with another alliance there is also a majority in parliament.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis’ ANO party narrowly lost the parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic. After counting almost all the votes, it came in second place with 27.2 percent, as the Czech statistics authority announced. The strongest power was therefore the center-right alliance Spolu (Together) with 27.7 percent. In third place with 15.5 percent is the alliance of the pirate and mayor parties.

Babis’ government thus loses its majority in parliament, while the two opposition alliances together have 109 of the 200 seats in the House of Representatives. “The change is here, we are the change,” said Spolu top candidate Petr Fiala, who claimed the formation of a majority government.

Much depends on Zeman

After the election, however, a lot depends on President Milos Zeman: He is considered an ally of Babis and, according to the constitution, proposes a candidate to parliament for the office of head of government.

In the past, Zeman had stressed several times that he would not give government mandate to an electoral alliance, but to the strongest individual party. In any case, that would be the populist ANO von Babis, since Spolu consists of the three parties ODS, TOP09 and KDU-CSL. A spokesman for the president announced that Babis would be received for an interview on Sunday morning.

The country is now threatened with a stalemate. Spolu as well as the Alliance of Pirate and Mayor Parties had already declared before the election that they refused to cooperate with Babis.

Babis financial affair

Babis was last caught up in a financial affair during the election campaign. After revelations in the context of the “Pandora Papers”, he is said to have bought real estate in France through dubious letterbox companies in 2009.

The 67-year-old, who portrays himself as an anti-corruption fighter, denied allegations of money laundering and tax evasion. In the past, allegations of fraud and other scandals had hardly done any serious harm to the populist.