Scandal around leader paralyzes Czech Republic
Lawmakers seek to end rocky rule of prime minister
PRAGUE — Andrej Babis, prime minister of the Czech Republic and its secondrichest person, has long been compared to President Donald Trump for his populist politics, bombastic style and exuberant wealth.
He has also been similarly besieged by opponents he accuses of being part of an organized cabal out to bring him down.
On Friday, those tensions hit a high point when lawmakers held a vote of no confidence seeking to end Babis’ government, the second time they have done so since he came to power more than a year ago.
Though Babis survived the challenge, the conflict has paralyzed the politics of this small central European country.
For Babis, those politics have become increasingly personal. In the most recent and bizarre turn of the scandal, it was reported Babis’ eldest son — Andrej Babis Jr., 35, known as Junior — had claimed that his father had had him abducted and held outside the country against his will to prevent him from talking to investigators.
In response, Babis revealed that his son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2015 and charged the reporters with exploiting his mentally ill son when they tracked him down in Switzerland and interviewed him on the doorstep of his home.
Wojciech Przybylski, editor of the magazine Visegrad Insight, said Czech politics was now in a state of limbo — caught between fortifying its democratic institutions and moving in the illiberal direction of other countries in the region.
It “has not gone as far as Hungary or Poland, but if it continues along the path it may very soon follow,” he said.
Babis has never been able to lift himself out of a scandal that dates back more than a decade tied to the conglomerate he built, Agrofert, and that made his fortune — in particular, whether he misused subsidies from the European Union.
Those questions reached full boil as Babis’ ANO party competed in the parliamentary elections in 2017, with Czech police bringing fraud charges against him and 10 other people, including his two children from his first marriage.
When investigators sought to interview the children, their lawyer claimed that both suffered from mental illness and could not testify.
It was around this time that Andrej Babis Jr. left the country. In late December 2017, he sent an email to Czech police saying he was being held against his will in Crimea.
Babis, in the interview, said his son had been on vacation, seeking to escape from the media glare, and there was nothing unusual about the trip.
Last month, two journalists working for the news website Seznam Zprávy, tracked down the son, who was in Switzerland.