Populist billionaire wins Czech election

The party founded by billionaire tycoon Andrej Babis scored a resounding victory in the Czech Republic’s parliamentary elections on Saturday, as the central European country became the latest EU state to witness a surge in support for populist groups.

With 99 per cent of polling stations having reported, Mr Babis’s Ano party had received 29.7 per cent of the vote, almost 20 percentage points ahead of its nearest rival. Two other anti-establishment groups, the Pirate party and the far-right SPD, which wants to take the Czech Republic out of the EU, claimed third and fourth place, respectively.

“This is an earthquake. It’s a total revolt against the established parties and the mainstream,” said Milan Nic, of the German Council on Foreign Relations. “Since the 1990s I can’t recall elections that changed the political landscape so much.”

The result is the latest in a wave of successes for European populists this year, after a strong showing for the National Front in France’s presidential election, the entry of the AfD into Germany’s Bundestag, and gains for the Freedom party in Austria.

With the exception of the Eurosceptic Civic Democrats, who took second place with 11.2 per cent of the vote, the Czech Republic’s traditional parties had a dismal night — even though the vote took place against the backdrop of a booming economy which boasts the lowest unemployment rate in the EU.

The Social Democrats, who led the previous coalition which also contained Ano and the Christian Democrats, saw their vote share collapse from 20.5 in 2013 to 7.3 per cent this year. The Christian Democrats’s share declined from 6.8 to 5.8 per cent.

Jaroslav Faltynek, Ano’s deputy chairman, said the party would first talk to its former coalition partners about forming a new government, but added it would talk to all parties in parliament. The Civic Democrats quickly ruled out joining a coalition with Ano, which means that it will need a three-party coalition to secure a majority.

Despite serving as finance minister for most of the past four years, Mr Babis — who founded Ano in 2011 — ran a campaign that was relentlessly critical of the Czech Republic’s established parties and sought to style himself as a political outsider.

Drawing on his career in the private sector — he founded and built up the Agrofert conglomerate, one of the Czech Republic’s biggest private employers — Mr Babis portrayed himself as a businessman who would overhaul an inefficient state.

He also adopted a resolutely anti-euro stance and was sharply critical of the EU’s migrant policies — both positions that play well in a country that has the second lowest trust in the EU of all member states, according to the latest Eurobarometer poll.

Mr Babis suffered two setbacks in the run-up to the election, with police two weeks ago charging him in relation to a probe into an EU subsidy for a project known as the Stork’s Nest, and Slovakia’s Constitutional Court ordering a lower court to revisit a case over whether he collaborated with the secret police during the communist era. Mr Babis repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in relation to the subsidy probe, and strongly denied ever collaborating with the secret police.

However, neither of these affairs, nor his opponents’ portrayal of him as a threat to democracy, appears to have had a big impact on voters, who as well as handing Mr Babis first place in the poll also gave strong backing to other populist groupings.

The SPD, headed by firebrand leader Tomio Okamura, campaigned on an uncompromisingly anti-immigrant platform, and also demanded a referendum on pulling the Czech Republic out of the EU.

Jiri Pehe, director of New York University in Prague, said that Mr Okamura had been successful in rallying voters who had previously voted for a variety of parties, rather than increasing the number of far right voters. “In the 1990s people also voted in these numbers for the extreme right . . . and I think that Okamura simply consolidated this section of the electorate. There is a potential of between 10 and 15 per cent,” he said.

Despite making big gains, the SPD was beaten to third place by the Pirates. “I think this is ultimately the expression of frustrated youth vote for whom there were no other obvious options,” said Mr Nic. “This is probably a predominantly young constituency for whom Okamura was too much.”

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