Eurasia Press & News
Gathered under the rallying cry to “prevent the rule of extremists”, thousands of people converged Sunday afternoon on Prague’s Old Town Square in support of the country’s pro-Western democratic orientation.
“We want to show that there is also a positive patriotism that is on the side of the West, freedom and democracy,” said the organisers of Million Moments for Democracy (“Milion chvilek pro demokracii”), a grassroots movement.
“Nothing has been decided yet,” they said, urging Czech citizens to mobilise in force to safeguard Czechia’s pro-Western and democratic path, and prevent extremists from entering government.
Organised just a few days before Czechs vote in key parliamentary elections on October 3-4, the protest set the tone for a high-stakes ballot that could fundamentally change which direction the Czech Republic will take for years to come.
Populism takes centre stage
“One of the things that has surprised me is the hyped atmosphere during the campaign that even escalated into vulgar and violent behaviour against the main candidates,” says Tomas Cirhan, an assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University in Brno.
“This is of course not completely novel, but the intensity is striking,” he tells BIRN in his assessment of a heated, polarising and largely negative campaign that saw – among other lowlights – Prime Minister Petr Fiala facing regular verbal insults or opposition leader Andrej Babis physically attacked by a crutch-wielding man during a campaign event. While not the only culprit, Russia’s massive disinformation and propaganda efforts – meant to sow doubt and division rather than support a specific party – have also contributed to poisoning a public space that is now more toxic and divisive than ever.
Four years after a make-shift coalition of five pro-democratic forces narrowly beat agro-billionaire Babis’s ANO movement on a promise of returning decency in politics and firmly anchoring the Central European country in Western institutions, the nation appears bitterly divided and the political debate wretched.
Facing abysmal ratings and just around 20 per cent of voting intentions, the ruling right-wing Spolu coalition has gone to great lengths to frame the ballot as an existential battle for the future of the country. “It’s about where the Czech Republic will go. Whether we remain as a strong democracy, with full freedom, with prosperity, a country that is firmly part of the West… or whether we drift somewhere to the East,” Fiala warned during the campaign.
“The Spolu campaign waged everything on the moral appeal of their voters being ‘on the right side’ – I expected their campaign to culminate with something more tangible,” Cirhan complains, echoing many experts’ warnings that such polarising rhetoric – demonising political opponents along with hundreds of thousands of their voters – does little in the way of promoting a healthy democratic culture.
According to Petra Vodova, assistant professor at the political science department of the University of Hradec Kralove, “to some extent, yes, I would agree that this election reflects a broader clash between pro-Western and pro-Russian worldviews”. However she also highlights important distinctions between parties commonly included in the latter group, from the “most radical” Communist-led Stacilo to ANO’s “deliberately vague programmatic messaging”.
“You don’t have to love Spolu, you don’t have to like me personally, but the reality is that if the votes are diluted, Andrej Babis will form the [next] government,” Fiala stated at the launch of the final phase of his campaign last month, stoking large parts of the electorate’s deep-rooted antipathy towards the former billionaire prime minister in the hope that many will opt to vote for what they see as “the lesser of two evils”.
But – crutches notwithstanding – it’s been largely plain sailing for Babis and his ANO party. Week in, week out, polls have given his populist, Eurosceptic, anti-immigration movement between 30 and 35 per cent of voting intentions.
After four years of austerity-driven reforms and financial hardship, many voters are willing to turn a blind eye to Babis’s spotty track record, a first stint as premier marked by a catastrophic handling of the Covid pandemic, his endless judicial run-ins and oligarchic tendencies, and a shift to the far right that places him, at the EU level, in league with the bloc’s most notorious illiberal, pro-Russian leaders, including Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
As satirist and writer Dominik Landsman summed up for Seznam Zpravy: “If Andrej Babis shoots an orphan or eats a puppy, his voters will still say ‘better than Fiala’.”
While unoriginal, the tried-and-tested recipe of that appeal – together with the government’s unpopularity; the population’s Ukraine war fatigue; criticism of the EU, especially the Green Deal and immigration policies; vague promises to solve the cost-of-living crisis and restore households’ purchasing power; and a comforting pledge to put Czechs first – has put the Straka Academy, the seat of government in Prague, once more within his reach.
“I have a feeling that [ANO voters] are ready to make a trade-off between the amount of money in their wallets, and the basic values of the democratic institutions in the Czech Republic,” Otto Eibl, a political scientist at Masaryk University, warned on Radio Prague.
Two blocs
Considering their voters’ exodus, most experts consider it highly unlikely, if not impossible, for the ruling Spolu coalition of Prime Minister Fiala to cling to power. “In general, the polls can only tell us part of the story, as around one-third of voters tend to decide in the last two weeks before elections,” cautions Cirhan of Masaryk University.
Czech elections have frequently been marked by last-minute upheavals, even more so in recent years as the share of swing voters – the roughly 12 per cent who decide whether and whom to vote for on election day – has grown. Part of them are disappointed government voters who might, ultimately, decide to go out and vote on October 3-4.
The centre-right, junior coalition partner Mayors and Independents (Stan), now polling at around 12 per cent, is hoping to pick up some of those votes, though the party’s attempt to promote itself as a ‘third line’ above the toxic Spolu-ANO bickering failed to gain as much traction as it had hoped.
And after months in apparent limbo following their chaotic exit from the government at the end of last year, the liberal Pirate Party – with strong support among younger, urban voters – has been gaining ground in the polls and is now approaching the 10 per cent mark.
Spolu, Stan and the Pirates have all rejected any cooperation with Andrej Babis after October 4 – highlighting the existence of two antagonistic blocs with little to no spillover or common ground between them.
While the original five coalition parties’ current polling numbers are, once totted up, close to their results at the last election four years ago, experts emphasise that their rise to power four years ago was made possible by the “loss” of nearly a million votes that went to smaller parties – many potential ANO allies – who failed to meet the required 5 per cent threshold to enter parliament. They might not be so lucky this time around.
Three parties and groupings are already lining up to join or tacitly support a government led by ANO, which doesn’t appear to have the numbers to form a one-colour government and must tread a fine line between achieving the best possible result without depleting the votes of potential coalition partners – or demotivating overconfident voters.
Led by far-right firebrand Tomio Okamura, the anti-EU, xenophobic and pro-Russian Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) is currently polling at about 12 per cent, with some surveys giving an ANO-SPD alliance a majority in the 200-member lower house.
In a bid to attract the fringe vote, the SPD portrays itself as the only safe, double-digit anti-establishment choice – in contrast to the Communist-led Stacilo movement and the conservative Motorists for Themselves, both polling at about 6-7 per cent, dangerously close to the 5 per cent threshold required to send MPs into parliament.
“I think that the biggest surprise will be whether these smaller parties will make it into the parliament,” Tomas Cirhan tells BIRN, “and, simultaneously, it will be the most decisive factor in regard to the potential formation of government coalitions.”
The morning after the day before
Some lessons from four years ago appear to have already been learned. The SPD joined forces with three smaller far-right parties, while Stacilo – itself a grouping of three parties led by the Communists – made an electoral alliance with the Czech Social Democrats. Last month, the Constitutional Court acknowledged that while both constituted “hidden coalitions” (normally subject to higher voter thresholds), the 5 per cent threshold would still apply to them.
The technicalities of Czechia’s complex electoral system, and double-round methodology to translate votes into mandates, must also be taken into account. As political scientist Jakub Sedo reminded: “The [Czech] electoral system significantly disadvantages parties that are just above the threshold while, on the contrary, it favours the strongest parties.”
Though ANO will almost certainly emerge as the election winner on Saturday evening, there is still a lot of uncertainty about whether Babis will be able to form a government – and most importantly with whom. “The Czech party system is fairly fragmented,” notes Cirhan, adding that cooperation within those two aforementioned blocs “cannot be taken for granted”.
On top of notorious personal animosity between some leaders – including Babis and SPD leader Okamura – ideological differences might turn post-election coalition talks into an uphill battle. Both SPD and Stacilo have called for a referendum on Czechia’s membership in the EU and/or NATO – an option Babis has dismissed out of hand.
“A single-party majority is highly unlikely, and Babis is ambiguous about potential coalition partners,” says Petra Vodova of the University of Hradec Kralove, though adds that “despite reports of a poor personal relationship between Babis and Okamura, ANO and SPD already govern together in some regions”.
There is also little love lost between the SPD, Stacilo and Motorists, all configurations being considered. Reciprocally, some commentators venture that despite their stated red lines, some government parties could ultimately do a U-turn and participate in an ANO-led government, including a breakaway faction of Fiala’s Civic Democrats, or even Stan.
As head of state bound by requirements of non-partisanship but tasked with safeguarding the country’s European and international obligations, President Petr Pavel is also expected to play a central role in post-election talks. He’s already indicated that he would refuse to countenance any cabinet minister who questions the Czech Republic’s place in the EU or NATO.
Trickier still, allegations of subsidy fraud facing Babis and the myriad conflicts of interest with relation to his giant Agrofert conglomerate could provide legal grounds for Pavel not to nominate him as prime minister – a nuclear constitutional option seen as unlikely, but one that hints at the many uncertainties bound to surface after this week’s vote.
And with ANO’s “catch-all” chameleon-like appeal largely based on its ability to flip-flop depending on which way the wind blows, who could end up joining a Babis-led government will be key in determining the direction that the Czech Republic might take, both at home and abroad.
As Masaryk University’s Otto Eibl told Czech Radio: “I fear he might be the one who opens the door for others who will damage the Czech Republic and its image abroad.”
