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Czech presidential election: the oligarch or the general?

By Sean L Hanley, on 20 January 2023

Czechs again seem set to reject populism for moderate steady-as-you-go leadership, leaving bigger reform debates for another day, argues Seán Hanley.

Brno pro Ukrajinu 2022-03-01 (3762b) Petr Pavel

Petr Pavel [Photo: Martin Strachoň, CC BY-SA 4.0]

On 13-14 January Czech voters went to the polls in record numbers to choose a new head of state to replace two-term president Miloš Zeman.   Although, as expected, none of the eight candidates gained enough support to win outright,  two clear frontrunners emerged to contest a second, run-off round on 27-28 January: former prime minister and billionaire businessman Andrej Babiš, who leads the  ANO movement – Czechia’s biggest political party – and independent retired general Petr Pavel, the ex-head of the Czech Army who had served  a high-ranking  NATO official in Brussels. Pavel narrowly topped the poll with 35.4 percent of the vote with Babiš narrowly trailing on 34.99 percent.

At first glance, the result looks puzzling. Voters in one of post-communist Central Europe’s most socially liberal democracies have opted for an unlikely-looking choice between an oligarch and a general.  Conventional party-political candidates and issues were largely absent from the campaign which centred on personalities, particularly, on the divisive figure of Babiš.  Opponents see the billionaire ex-PM, who was acquitted by a court of EU subsidy fraud in the long-running Storks Nest case mid-way through the campaign, as a corrupt populist with strong authoritarian leanings.

But the contest also reveals underlying continuities in Czech politics. Originally elected to parliament on an anti-corruption platform and promises to ‘run the state like a firm’, Babiš has long since shifted towards a loose social populism promising big public spending, generous pensions, and hikes in public sector salaries, which has seen him swallow up the electorate of Czechia’s once strong parties of the traditional left.

This was amply demonstrated in the first-round. Babiš promised to ‘help people’ and fend off belt tightening or taxes rises the current centre-right government may resort to cope with Czechia’s strained post-Covid public finances. Analysis of first round-voting patterns confirm that Babiš’s vote was strongest in poorer regions and smaller localities with lower  standards of living and educational attainment, and higher levels of unemployment and consumer debt. (more…)

Czech elections: despite the Pandora Papers Babiš will be hard to dislodge

By Sean L Hanley, on 5 October 2021

2021 was supposed to be the year that the Czech Republic’s billionaire populist Prime Minister, Andrej Babiš, finally came a cropper. Dogged by corruption allegations, fending off prosecution and under persistent fire from the EU conflicts-of-interests, the oligarch-turned-politician’s ham-fisted handling of the covid crisis caught up with him. Having bragged that early success controlling the pandemic made Czechs and Central Europeans ‘best in Covid’ – and trumpeted his own skills as a political crisis manager – by March this year Babiš was presiding over a country with the worst infection rates in the world, with his government’s record slated by experts and medical professionals.

But just days before parliamentary elections on October 8-9, and despite the bombshell Pandora Papers revelations about his use of offshore companies to buy property on the French Riviera, the populist billionaire seems to have every chance of hanging on  – and the outcome of the elections is uncertain. (more…)

What will the Euro elections tell us about Eastern Europe?

By Sean L Hanley, on 11 May 2014

Plakat do Parlamentu Europejskiego 2014 Platforma Obywatelska

Photo: Lukasz2 via Wikicommons

Seán Hanley looks ahead to the upcoming European elections and assesses what they may tell us about the enduring differences between voters and parties in Western and Eastern Europe.

The elections to the European Parliament which take place across the EU’s 28 member states between 22 and 25 May are widely seen a series of national contests, which voters use to vent their frustration and give incumbent and established parties a good kicking. Newspaper leader writers and think-tankers got this story and have been working overtime to tell us about a rising tide of populism driven by a range of non-standard protest parties.

The conventional wisdom is that the ‘populist threat’ is all eurosceptic (and usually of a right-wing persuasion) although in some cases the ‘eurosceptic surge’ is clearly a matter of whipping together  familiar narrative than careful analysis.

But, as a simultaneous EU-wide poll using similar (PR-based) electoral systems, the EP elections also provide a rough and ready yardstick of Europe-wide political trends, ably tracked by the LSE-based Pollwatch 2014 and others.

And, for those interested in comparison and convergence of the two halves of a once divided continent, they a window into the political differences and similarities between the ‘old’ pre-2004 of Western and Southern Europe and the newer members from Central and Eastern Europe (now including Croatia which joined in 2013). (more…)

Turning left or melting down?

By Sean L Hanley, on 23 October 2013

ANO2011 poster

Photo: Seán Hanley

 Seán Hanley previews the upcoming parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic where several newly formed parties, including the ANO2011 anti-corruption movement led by billionaire Andrej Babiš, have the potential to  shake up the country’s ailing political establishment.

Czech voters go to the polls in early parliamentary elections on 25-26 October. The elections follow the collapse, amid personal and political scandal, of the centre-right government of Petr Nečas in June, and the subsequent failure of President Zeman’s handpicked caretaker administration to win a vote of confidence.

At one level the election seems set to deliver a simple and straightforward verdict,: established opposition parties on the left will win, while governing right-wing parties will be heavily rejected by an electorate frustrated with austerity, stagnating living standards and sleaze. The main opposition Czech Social Democrats (ČSSD), most polls have suggested, will emerge as the clear winners with around 25-30 per cent of the vote, although the final polls published before voting have suggested that the party’s support is starting to slide. Meanwhile the hardline Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM) is likely to pull in 15-20 per cent.

 The polls also point to a defeat of historic proportions for the right-wing parties of the former coalition. The Civic Democrats (ODS) (formerly led by Nečas) have proved surprisingly deft in trying to pull back from the brink: the party picked Miroslava Němcová, one of its few leaders untainted by corruption – and the first woman to head a major Czech party – as the party’s new public face and have run an inventive (and occasionally witty) Twitter-led election campaign.

But voters have remained largely unimpressed and the ODS seems set to see the 20 per cent support it received in the 2010 elections – then its worst ever performance – halved, relegating it to minor party status. Some polls put the ODS as low as 6.5 per cent, close to the 5 per cent threshold for parliamentary representation. The Chart below gives an indication of the latest polling.

ODS’s main centre-right rival TOP09 has, however, failed to capitalise on the troubles of its former coalition partner. Instead, it has waged a pedestrian election campaign and has no prospect of repeating its success in this year’s presidential election, when TOP09 leader Karel Schwarzenberg united a broad swathe of liberal and centre-right voters against the left-wing challenge of Miloš Zeman. Most polls suggest the party will struggle to match the 16 per cent it polled in 2010

Many voters have turned to new parties and extra-parliamentary groupings. Niche parties such as the Greens and Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL), ‘personal parties’ such as the Civic Rights Party (SPOZ) of President Zeman or the Eurosceptic nationalist ‘Heads Up’ bloc endorsed by Václav Klaus have picked up sufficient support to put them within shouting distance of the five per cent hurdle.

So too has the populist Dawn of Direct Democracy movement of a businessman-turned-politician Tomio Okamura. Okamura, who first came to prominence as a judge on the Czech TV’s version of Dragon’s Den in 2010, has gained profile through his fierce attacks against the political class, socially populist rhetoric and baiting of the Roma minority using his unusual Czecho-Japanese background to deny accusations of racism

The most telling impact, however, has been made by ANO2011 the anti-corruption movement led by the Slovak-born billionaire Andrej Babiš, which has moved in a few weeks from relative obscurity to opinion ratings comfortably in excess of 10 per cent and is now regularly outpolling ODS and TOP09. (more…)