Imagine being led by a billionaire who campaigned on fighting corruption while being investigated for corruption, who was elected on a promise to run the country like a business while many suspect he sought to use the position to promote his own business interests.<\/p>\n
Now imagine that the billionaire had to win approval from the legislature in order to govern \u2014 and many of the nine different political parties seem dead set against even working with him.<\/p>\n
Congratulations \u2014 you\u2019ve just pictured the current confused state of Czech politics.<\/p>\n
The Czech Republic, officially known as Czechia, has a new minority government as of Dec. 13. It likely won\u2019t in less than a month: There is an excellent chance the new government will not survive a vote of confidence in early January, potentially threatening further political turmoil in a key NATO ally that\u2019s already described by the Economist Intelligence Unit as a \u201cflawed democracy.\u201d (Of course, as of this year, so is the United States, according to the unit\u2019s analysts.)<\/p>\n
The struggle to form a new government in Prague comes at a rough time for Central and Eastern Europe, democracy-wise. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has vilified the European Union, George Soros, and immigrants, while embracing \u201cilliberalism.\u201d Poland\u2019s Law and Justice Party seems at odds with both, well, law and justice. Slovakia\u2019s parliament is roughly one-tenth neo-Nazi.<\/p>\n
In that crowd, the Czech Republic was something of an unremarkable outlier. Then came the October victory of Andrej Babis, a Czech businessman and billionaire who somehow managed to run as an anti-establishment candidate while serving as the country\u2019s finance minister, and who won on an anti-corruption platform despite an ongoing investigation into his own alleged misuse of millions of euros of EU funds.<\/p>\n
Traditional \u201cpro-democracy\u201d parties are threatening to withhold the vote of confidence in January for a minority government helmed by Babis, the second-richest Czech and leader of ANO, his pro-business, anti-establishment political party, which won the October elections with 29 percent of the vote. The government itself is remarkably uncontroversial, with half of the ministers carrying over from the last government, but Babis is not. During and after the election, stories abounded likening Babis to U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
If he can\u2019t secure support from a grab bag of parties with wildly different political programs, Babis will have to count on the president naming him prime minister a second time and then seek parliamentary support all over again. Which, oddly, the president has already signaled may happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he formed this minority government with the intention of not even trying to pass the vote of confidence. I think that he has a promise from President Milos Zeman that he will be appointed for a second round,\u201d Jiri Pehe, a Czech analyst and writer referred to around town as the \u201cBabisologist-in-chief,\u201d told Foreign Policy.<\/p>\n
Naming Babis prime minister, even though he\u2019s radioactive for mainstream parties, makes a certain sense for Zeman, a known quantity who is running for re-election as president next month. With parliament in chaos, Pehe said, \u201cZeman will be able to argue that people will be crazy to elect someone new.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, lurking in the background and angling for a bigger political role are the Communists and a far-right nationalist group, raising fears that the anti-establishment wave that brought Babis into office could undermine Czechs\u2019 hard-won standing and positioning in the international order.<\/p>\n
Despite the Trump comparisons, experts caution that he is, above all, a pragmatist whose time in office will be defined by two things: the people and the parties willing to work with him in turning his 29 percent of the vote into a workable government, and the identity of the next president.<\/p>\n
Which presents a possible problem: At present, few of those parties seem willing to work with Babis. Neither the Czech Social Democratic Party, ANO\u2019s former coalition partner, or conservative party ODS, which finished second, has suggested it will vote for his government.<\/p>\n
Alternatively, some suggest, Babis just wants it to seem like parties won\u2019t work with him so he can do what he wants.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a businessman, he doesn\u2019t want any control [over him],\u201d said Ondrej Benesik, a member of the Christian and Democratic Union, a pro-EU, pro-NATO party. \u201cThat\u2019s why he\u2019s aiming at forming a government made up of only his own people who he can control.\u201d<\/p>\n
And who might that be? While he didn\u2019t include them in his minority government, Babis is widely believed to have worked with the Communists and the Freedom and Direct Democracy Party (SPD), a far-right group led, somewhat improbably, by the part-Japanese Tomio Okamura. Both parties did poorly in the October parliamentary elections but somehow played prominent roles in the formation of a new parliament, which has to be formed before there can be a new government.<\/p>\n
If the Communists and far-right are getting a hearing, said Jan Machacek of the Institute for Politics and Society, that\u2019s because Babis had little choice. The \u201clittle democratic parties\u201d were \u201cin a state of shock and refused to cooperate,\u201d he said. \u201cHe had to manage somehow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some worry that, in managing, he elevated extremists above their disappointing electoral performance. SPD, an anti-EU, anti-immigrant party that came in fourth with just 11 percent of the vote, landed the parliamentary security committee, which works with Czech intelligence services. The man now tasked in part with fighting fake news, SPD\u2019s Radek Koten, has suggested on Facebook that the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were a CIA plot and that the United States is out to rid the world of Slavs.<\/p>\n
Parliamentary committees may not be where the true power lies in Czech politics, but that pick was widely seen as symbolically bad.<\/p>\n
The Communists, who came in fifth with 8 percent of the vote but who have said they would support Babis in the confidence vote, snagged the parliamentary committee on immunity. That\u2019s significant because it will have to make a recommendation on whether Babis can retain parliamentary immunity from prosecution.<\/p>\n
The Communists, who advocate leaving NATO, also wanted oversight of intelligence and security in the hands of the opposition. They wanted control over the commission overseeing the General Inspection of Security Forces, which has responsibility for investigating alleged crimes carried out by police.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne should not expect anything good from the Communists,\u201d Pehe said. \u201cIf there is any kind of problem they can cause for the system, they will do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Babis and ANO intend to keep Prague\u2019s pro-EU, pro-NATO stance, despite flirting with extremist parties at loggerheads with both. Babis \u201cunderstands the EU is the most important thing,\u201d one senior government official said.<\/p>\n
But another senior government official lamented that the Czech Republic is at a crossroads.<\/p>\n
Between puffs on a hand-rolled cigarette, the official explained that after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Czechs had a clear vision: becoming members of the Western club, exemplified by NATO and the European Union.<\/p>\n
Now they\u2019re in the EU \u2014 but they wonder what they\u2019ve gotten out of it. Voters are disillusioned and dissatisfied, and they just want Czechs to \u201clook after ourselves,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Vaclav] Havel and others,\u201d he said, \u201cthose people are gone.\u201d And in their place is Andrej Babis, whatever that might mean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imagine being led by a billionaire who campaigned on fighting corruption while being investigated for corruption, who was elected on a promise to run the country like a business while many suspect he sought to use the position to promote his own business interests. Now imagine that the billionaire had to win approval from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":442,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n