{"id":930,"date":"2018-04-15T21:44:48","date_gmt":"2018-04-15T19:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/czechpoints.com\/?p=930"},"modified":"2019-07-11T16:37:19","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T14:37:19","slug":"billionaire-babis-testing-limits-of-democracy-us-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/czechpoints.com\/billionaire-babis-testing-limits-of-democracy-us-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaire Babis Testing Limits Of Democracy: US Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Peter Laca and Krystof Chamonikolas Via Bloomberg<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

A Czech billionaire\u2019s ambition may decide whether his nation remains anchored to European democratic values or slides into the ranks of countries embracing an increasingly euroskeptic, illiberal model.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Andrej Babis has navigated himself into an impasse since winning parliamentary elections in October. He\u2019s refused to let anyone else run the government, even as a fraud\u00a0investigation\u00a0has torpedoed any chance of traditional political forces giving him the support he needs to get a cabinet confirmed. His most obvious remaining option is to rely on extremist parties.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was valid before the elections is valid now,\u201d Babis, 63, told journalists Tuesday, about a week after his coalition talks collapsed with the Social Democrats. \u201cI was the only candidate for the prime minister. Nothing has changed in that respect.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a solution to his my-way-or-the-highway stance, pro-Russian and euroskeptic President Milos Zeman urged Babis to seek the support of the Communist party and the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy, known as SPD. Both want the country of 10.6 million people to leave NATO, and SPD\u2019s leader has also called for exiting the European Union.<\/p>\n

Such a tie-up would tilt the Czech Republic further in the direction of its regional peers Poland and Hungary, where anti-immigrant governments have\u00a0clashed\u00a0with the EU over democratic standards and rule of law. Since winning the October ballot vowing to keep out Muslims and railing against meddling from Brussels, Babis has sought to win the respect of European leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel with assurances that he\u2019s a pro-EU leader worthy of being heard.<\/p>\n

\u201cBabis is trying really hard to look like a pro-western politician,\u201d said Jiri Pehe, the director of New York University in Prague. \u201cBabis\u2019s sizable ego very much wants not only domestic, but also also international recognition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Babis argues that ANO eclipsed all other parties in the October vote, making him the only clear choice to lead the government. And despite the fraud allegations, which he denies, opinion polls show that he\u2019s the country\u2019s most popular politician. With an estimated fortune of more than $4 billion, Babis said he and his party will decide which path to take as early as Thursday.<\/p>\n

The prospects of cooperating with SPD are already causing tension within ANO, however. A number of senior members have said even an informal alliance with SPD is unacceptable after its leader, Tomio Okamura, sparked public outrage for questioning the severity of conditions at a concentration camp near Prague during the Nazi occupation in World War II. Constitutional Court head Pavel Rychetsky called Okamura\u2019s views \u201cracist, xenophobic and neo-Nazi.\u201d<\/p>\n

Babis himself has repeatedly said he won\u2019t create a coalition with either the Communists or the SPD, but he hasn\u2019t rejected relying on them to win a confidence vote after he failed in a first try in January.<\/p>\n

He argues that both the Communist Party and the SPD were elected to parliament with legitimate votes. Relying on backing from the two groups is \u201cthe only option on the table for now,\u201d Babis told the Mlada Fronta Dnes newspaper, which belongs to his chemical and media empire, in an interview published on Thursday.<\/p>\n

ANO has already pushed through some legislation with the help of the two fringe parties, including electing Okamura as deputy speaker and keeping him in the job when the opposition tried to oust him over the concentration camp remarks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing that\u2019s stopping Babis from an open cooperation with Okamura is his fear of the reaction abroad, of what the EU tells him,\u201d said Stanislav Balik, a political scientist at Masaryk University in Brno, the country\u2019s second-largest city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Peter Laca and Krystof Chamonikolas Via Bloomberg A Czech billionaire\u2019s ambition may decide whether his nation remains anchored to European democratic values or slides into the ranks of countries embracing an increasingly euroskeptic, illiberal model. Prime Minister Andrej Babis has navigated himself into an impasse since winning parliamentary elections in October. He\u2019s refused […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":369,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[68,57,59,297,300,261,56,296,127,102],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBillionaire Babis Testing Limits Of Democracy: US Media - Czech Points<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/czechpoints.com\/billionaire-babis-testing-limits-of-democracy-us-media\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Billionaire Babis Testing Limits Of Democracy: US Media - Czech Points\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Written by Peter Laca and Krystof Chamonikolas Via Bloomberg A Czech billionaire\u2019s ambition may decide whether his nation remains anchored to European democratic values or slides into the ranks of countries embracing an increasingly euroskeptic, illiberal model. 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He\u2019s refused […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/czechpoints.com\/billionaire-babis-testing-limits-of-democracy-us-media\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Czech Points\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/czechpoints\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-04-15T19:44:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-07-11T14:37:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/czechpoints.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/babisandrej-e1542378264361.jpg?fit=819%2C838&ssl=1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"819\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"838\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@czech_points\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@czech_points\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Zora \u0160m\u00eddov\u00e1\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Billionaire Babis Testing Limits Of Democracy: US Media - Czech Points","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/czechpoints.com\/billionaire-babis-testing-limits-of-democracy-us-media\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Billionaire Babis Testing Limits Of Democracy: US Media - Czech Points","og_description":"Written by Peter Laca and Krystof Chamonikolas Via Bloomberg A Czech billionaire\u2019s ambition may decide whether his nation remains anchored to European democratic values or slides into the ranks of countries embracing an increasingly euroskeptic, illiberal model. 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