Ruling party loses in Czech election

PRAGUE — Prime Minister Andrej Babis’ centrist party on Saturday narrowly lost the Czech Republic’s parliamentary election, a surprise development that could mean the end of the populist billionaire’s reign.

The two-day election to fill 200 seats in the lower house of the Czech Republic’s Parliament took place shortly after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported details of Babis’ overseas financial dealings in a project dubbed the Pandora Papers.

Babis, 67, has denied wrongdoing.

With all the votes counted, the Czech Statistics Office said Together, a liberal-conservative threeparty coalition, captured 27.8% of the vote, beating Babis’ ANO party, which won 27.1%. In a second blow to the populists, another center-left liberal coalition of the Pirate Party and STAN, a group of mayors, received 15.6% of the vote to finish third, the statistics office reported.

“The two democratic coalitions have gained a majority and have a chance to form a majority government,” said Petr Fiala, Together’s leader and its candidate for prime minister.

The winning coalition won 71 seats while its partner captured 37 seats to have a comfortable majority of 108 seats. Babis won 72 seats, six less than in the 2017 election.

The five opposition parties, which have policies closer to the European Union’s mainstream compared with the populist Babis, put aside their differences in this election to create the two coalitions, seeking to oust the euroskeptic prime minister from power.

On Saturday night, the two coalitions announced they have signed a memorandum of their will to govern together.

The result means “an absolute change of the politics in the Czech Republic,” analyst Michal Klima told Czech public television. “It stabilizes the country’s position in the West camp.

“It’s a huge defeat for [Babis],” he added.

The anti-migrant and anti-Muslim force in the Czech Republic, the Freedom and Direct Democracy party, which wants the country to leave the EU, finished fourth with 9.6% support, or 20 seats, fewer than the 22 seats it won in 2017.

Prior to the vote, Babis led a minority coalition government of ANO and the Social Democrats in the Eastern European country of 10.7 million people.