Just an hour after polls closed, the Czech broadcaster CNN Prima News unveiled the first election projection pointing to a clear victory for the billionaire populist Andrej Babiš and his ANO party. A pattern started emerging on social media: people saying the result was definitely not great, but not entirely terrible either.
The Babiš win had been long anticipated and many Czechs – including those gathered with me to watch the coverage – breathed a sigh of relief that extremism had not triumphed. The far right Freedom and Direct Democracy Party (SPD) recorded its worst performance. The far left, communist-led alliance Stačilo! (Enough!) failed to cross the threshold to enter parliament.
Riding a wave of populist sentiment and public dissatisfaction with the incumbent government, Babiš diverted support from both far left and far right parties, outperforming even the most optimistic opinion polls. He received 34.5% of the vote, while the turnout of 69% was the third highest in the history of the Czech Republic.
Overjoyed, 71-year-old Babiš arrived at his election day party in Prague holding a loudspeaker playing his favourite song, the 1981 Italian hit Sarà perché ti amo (It Must Be Because I Love You) by Ricchi e Poveri, which has become his anthem. He thanked voters as confetti showered from the ceiling.
Babiš won in all Czech regions except one – Prague. He was in high spirits after the results. “I’ve spoken with Trump five times,” he told a New York Times reporter. “I’ve been to the Pentagon and the FBI, I’ve spoken to the CIA director… and we are 100% pro-European.”
Despite the strong result, he still fell 21 MPs short of a majority and will need partners to govern. He immediately started coalition negotiations with the far right SPD and the populist, right wing, Eurosceptic Motorists for Themselves, which won nearly 7%.
“Babiš vacuumed up everything he could,” the popular Czech political commentator Jindřich Šídlo told me. “Protest voters opted for a safe bet. That’s why the communists failed to enter parliament and the far right performed so poorly. Babiš recorded the highest number of votes for a single party in the history of the Czech Republic.”
Political scientist Lukáš Jelínek said: “No one in modern Czech history has managed such a comeback after a spell in opposition as Andrej Babiš has. It’s fair to say this is the crowning achievement of his political career.
“But this time, things will be tougher for Andrej Babiš. Especially given his preference for a managerial, technocratic, and often authoritarian style of governance. He is left with two potential partners who are unlikely to be tamed as easily.”
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A prominent theme on the campaign trail was the idea of reviving a regional bloc of Central European countries – Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – that share Babiš’s anti-EU politics.
However, unlike Robert Fico and Viktor Orbán, Babiš is not pro-Russian. In fact, he has only met Vladimir Putin once in his career, at a lunch with international leaders, where they merely exchanged greetings. “Putin didn’t look particularly pleased,” Babiš remarked in 2022.
“He won’t be dragging the Czech Republic to the east – that’s nonsense,” said Šídlo. The prominent sociologist Dominik Želinský told me that “Czechia is unlikely to undergo as sharp a shift in its foreign policy orientation as Slovakia,” noting that “the staunchly pro-Russian platform of the Stačilo! alliance failed to gain traction.”
The wipe-out of the communist-led Stačilo! bloc was a shock for the extreme left. “It turned out that our efforts were not enough,” said its leader, Kateřina Konečná, her voice trembling as it became clear they had once again failed to cross the threshold.
Until the final days of the campaign, she remained confident of securing the necessary votes, buoyed by opinion polls that suggested they would make it.
Babiš is now likely to recreate his previous 2017-21 government. “The far right is weak, communists are out, he will not be forced to change the country’s course,” said Šídlo. Jelínek went further: “I expect a term full of twists and surprises. We’ll see whether this political setup can last until the end of the parliamentary term.”
Branislav Ondrásik reports for the Slovak daily SME
