(ANSA) - PRAGUE, 10 OTT - Andrej Babis, Czech Prime Minister
and leader of the ANO movement party loses majority. According
to Czech Statistics Office after processing data from more than
99 percent of constituencies, the opposition Together coalition,
with Pirates/STAN coalition are winning the majority over the
ruling ANO movement. Together coalition secured 27.7 percent of
the vote, followed by ANO with 27.1 percent and Pirates/STAN
with 15.5 percent. EPA/MARTIN DIVISEK
MARTIN DIVISEK/
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis is set to meet the country's
president on Sunday, with the populist billionaire hoping to
hold on to power despite a narrow election defeat at the hands
of a centre-right alliance. Babis, a long-time political ally of
President Milos Zeman, on Saturday lost the cliffhanger vote to
the Together alliance which is ready to form a majority
government with another grouping. But Zeman made it clear
earlier that he would appoint the head of a party, not an
alliance, following the election, suggesting Babis would get the
first attempt at negotiating a viable cabinet. "I can't see many
reasons why he would do something else," Tomas Lebeda, an
analyst at Palacky University in the eastern Czech city of
Olomouc, told AFP. Zeman is due to receive Babis in his
residence outside Prague for an informal meeting on Sunday
morning, before a more formal encounter scheduled for October
13. "We'll see what the president will say," Babis said as he
conceded defeat. The president cast his ballot in the residence
because of poor health, with Czech media suggesting rather
serious liver problems. Zeman's office has been secretive about
his illness, giving no details for weeks. The Together alliance
of the right-wing Civic Democrats, the centre-right TOP 09 and
the centrist Christian Democrats won 27.79 percent of the vote,
while Babis's ANO party earned 27.13 percent. The alliance would
have a majority of 108 seats in the 200-seat parliament together
with another grouping comprising the anti-establishment Pirate
Party and the centrist Mayors and Independents. Together leader
Petr Fiala said on Saturday that the two alliances would only
talk about a government with each other and ask Zeman to tap him
to form the government. "It seems that both democratic
coalitions will manage to get a parliamentary majority, which
most likely means Babis will have to go," said Otto Eibl, head
of the political science department at Masaryk University in
Brno. - Named in Pandora Papers - But Lebeda was more cautious,
saying that "we have known (Zeman) for some time, we know how he
thinks, how he acts". "Given his health, he may reconsider the
situation and arrive at a different conclusion, but I wouldn't
bet much on that as things are." The two alliances and ANO will
be joined in parliament by the far-right, anti-Muslim Freedom
and Direct Democracy (SPD) movement led by Tokyo-born
entrepreneur Tomio Okamura which scored almost 10 percent.
Turnout in the vote reached over 65 percent, up from 60.84
percent in the previous general election in 2017. Babis
currently leads a minority government with the left-wing Social
Democrats, which was until recently tacitly backed by the
Communist Party that ruled the former totalitarian
Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1989. But the Communists were ousted
from parliament at the polls for the first time since World War
II, failing to meet the five-percent threshold for any party to
enter parliament. The 67-year-old Babis, a food, chemicals and
media mogul, is facing police charges over alleged EU subsidy
fraud and the bloc's dismay over his conflict of interest as a
businessman and a politician. Last weekend, the Pandora Papers
investigation showed he had used money from his offshore firms
to finance the purchase of property in southern France in 2009,
including a chateau. He has denied any wrongdoing and slammed
the allegations as a smear campaign. Babis won the previous
general election in 2017, but it took him nine months to put
together a minority government with Zeman giving him all the
time he wanted. frj/dt/har (ANSA).
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