Czech Billionaire on Track for Victory in Parliamentary Vote

Article content

(Bloomberg) — Czech billionaire Andrej Babis was on track for victory in the country’s parliamentary election after pledging to undo four years of austerity and curb military aid to Ukraine.

Article content

Babis’s populist ANO party took 37% of the vote after the two-day ballot with about 72% of precincts counted on Saturday, data from the Czech Statistics Office showed. The coalition of his main rival, Prime Minister Petr Fiala, secured 21%. 

Article content

Article content

Campaigning on a Donald Trump-inspired message of placing Czechs first, 71-year-old Babis canvassed the eastern European nation on a platform of jump-starting economic growth, cutting corporate taxes and ending a regime of belt-tightening. Should he form a government, the billionaire could return to an office he held for four years before being ousted from power in 2021. 

Article content

Article content

Tapping voter frustration with the current government’s respond to a cost-of-living crisis, Babis promised that he would end policies that were making Czechs poorer — and promote the country’s place in Europe by focusing on transactional politics over values espoused by Brussels. 

Article content

Article content

A comeback would add to a roster of populist leaders in the region — Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Robert Fico — who have taken aim at European Union institutions. While Babis displayed more pragmatic leadership during his stint in power, he vowed to buck the EU trend on defense spending and curtailing military aid to Ukraine. 

Article content

But to lead again, he’ll need a parliamentary majority. Two potential governing allies — the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy and the populist Motorists party — were on track to win enough votes to enter parliament. 

Article content

Potential partners for Fiala struggled to muster the votes to create a path for the premier to stay in power. Mayors and Independents, a party aligned with with the incumbents, secured more than 10%, while the Czech Pirate Party — an pro-European, liberal party that left Fiala’s coalition in 2024 — took 8%, according to the count. 

Article content

Article content

Enough!, a left-wing formation that replaced the Czech communist party, was short of the threshold to gain entry to parliament, the tally showed. 

Article content

Forming a Majority

Article content

Babis has ruled out cooperation with parties in the ruling coalition, meaning he may have to forge an agreement with a party closer to the fringes of Czech politics. Short of a majority, the billionaire could seek a range of alliances that would allow him to lead a minority government.  

Article content

The billionaire, who amassed a fortune in agribusiness in the decades after the fall of communism, shook up the Czech political system in 2017 on a vow to root out corruption. In his four years in power, he took aim at the Brussels establishment, oversaw a chaotic pandemic response and became entangled himself in corruption scandals. 

Article content

He was voted out of office in the 2021 election, with Fiala leading a center-right majority into power on a promise to rein in debt that had amassed during the pandemic. But years of spending cuts during an energy crisis that buoyed inflation took a toll on the government’s support. 

Article content

During the campaign, Babis said he wants to boost infrastructure and other investments to get the economy grow as much as 4% a year and pledged to bring CEZ AS, the country’s biggest power producer, fully into state hands.