The Czech Republic is facing an uncertain political future after President Milos Zeman was rushed to hospital in a “serious condition” following the surprise election defeat of his prime minister.
Described by the BBC as a “heavy smoker and former heavy drinker who uses a wheelchair and suffers from diabetes”, the president was due to lead talks on forming a new government after PM Andrej Babis and his populist ANO party narrowly lost to a liberal-conservative three-party coalition.
The hospitalisation of 77-year-old Zeman with what doctors said was “complications to a chronic condition” has triggered “chaos” in his country, where the constitution decrees that the president “decides who to ask to form a new government” following a national vote, The Telegraph reported.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
Populist problems
Czech voters went to the polls last Friday and Saturday, just days after billionaire Babis was named in the Pandora Papers, which detailed how he “had used shell companies to buy property and a luxury chateau on the French Riviera”, said Politico.
The three-party, center-right SPOLU - meaning Together - coalition narrowly claimed victory with 27.8% of the vote, compared with ANO’s 27.1%, while “the Social Democrats and the Communists, who ruled as part of Babis’ coalition government, failed to reach the 5% threshold required to enter parliament”, the news site reported.
The centre-right coalition has already announced talks with the liberal Pirates-Mayors coalition, known as PirStan, to form a government. Together, the parties would control 108 of the Czech parliament’s 200 seats.
However, Zeman announced before the election that “he would pick the winner of the largest individual party, not coalition, to form the next government”, said the BBC.
And that party with the most votes is the populist ANO - so Babis, a close ally of Zeman, is “still widely expected” to be tasked with forming a new government when the delayed talks begin, added Politico. “However, with both the Communists and the Social Democrats out of parliament, it seems unlikely that Babis will be able to find enough support to remain in power and a period of political instability now looks certain.”
The Communists’ failure to win a single seat marks the first time since 1920 that “the Czech parliament won’t have communist delegates”, said euronews. Last week’s election also marks the first time that the Social Democrats, the country’s oldest party, has failed to secure representation in parliament.
Uncertainty abounds
Any hopes that Babis retains of clinging onto power are reliant on Zeman giving him first go at forming a coalition government. So the president’s “poor health could stymie a “post-election power grab” by the ANO founder and leader, said euronews.
Zeman had broadcast his political allegiances prior to the vote, announcing that he intended to vote for Babis. But come Saturday’s election day, the president’s deteriorating health meant that “a ballot box had to be brought to him so he could take part”, said the BBC.
Zeman had spent eight days in hospital in September, when officials claimed he was being treated for exhaustion and dehydration.
But sources claimed last week that he was “suffering from ascites, a build-up of abdominal fluid usually associated with cirrhosis of the liver”, the broadcaster’s Prague correspondent Rob Cameron reported.
Those claims were dismissed by the president’s office “as lies and disinformation, motivated by political activism and hatred”, Cameron added. “But distressing footage of the president being wheeled into hospital”, seemingly “unconscious”, have done “nothing to allay public concerns, at a time of political vacuum”.
Under the Czech Constitution, if a president is incapacitated, authority to appoint the PM passes to the speaker of the lower house. The current speaker is ANO member Radek Vondracek, who would be able to ask “his party boss to form a government”, said The Telegraph.
Alternatively, if Zeman continues in his presidential role, he could “keep Babis as prime minister without parliament’s approval until the next presidential election”, in January 2023, said euronews. But “SPOLU politicians have said they will try to remove Zeman through the Constitutional Court if that happens”.
It has also been “widely speculated” that Babis could attempt to strike a deal with the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party, which won 20 seats, the site added.
Babis “positioned himself on the far right during the campaign”, said Politico, with the ANO leader staking out his “fierce opposition to accepting migrants in the Czech Republic, declaring that he was against the EU’s Green Deal and even calling for the abolition of the European Parliament”.
But an ANO-SPD pact would only have a minority of seats in parliament.
In a futher blow to Babis, the rival SPOLU and PirStan coalitions have already “announced they have signed a memorandum of their will to govern together”, The Guardian said.
The election success of the liberal-conservative coalition has been seen as a “highly symbolic final consignment to historical oblivion for the communists”, added the paper.
The communists ruled the country for 40 years until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But who will lead the republic in the coming years is currently an open question.
