Billionaire Andrej Babis wins Czech vote
I worked since age 15, delivered milk, unloaded parcels at the station, did decorating, built weekend houses, all to make money.
PRAGUE: He may be facing charges over alleged EU subsidy fraud, but billionaire businessman Andrej Babis has won the support of voters in the Czech general election by pushing his trademark anti-corruption and anti-euro ticket.
Dubbed the “Czech version of Trump” by Forbes, the wiry, greyhaired, Slovak-born farming, media and chemicals mogul is the Czech Republic’s second-richest man.
He set up the populist ANO (Yes) party in 2011 as a political outsider determined to lure voters with promises of clean politics in the EU country of 10.6 million ranked more corrupt than Botswana by Transparency International.
ANO entered parliament two years later, but Babis himself has since been dogged by allegations of wrongdoing, something he flatly denies.
The 63-year-old hammered home his “now or never” mantra in his campaign, insisting that the ballot was a last chance for voters to get rid of “the treacherous hydra of corruption choking this country” by handing him power.
Healsoreachedouttoeurosceptic voters with a letter vowing that “the Czech Republic will not adopt the euro” should he take office and that he wants “a single Europe which plays fair and where nobody is a second-class member”.
In his victory address, Babis insisted ANO was “proEuropean” and did “not threaten democracy”.
He echoes other eastern EU leaders – especially in Hungary and Poland – who oppose mandatory refugee quotas and various rules they see as attempts by Brussels to limit national sovereignty.
Given his country’s heavy reliance on the EU both in terms
Andrej Babis
of trade and subsidies, Babis has ruled out “Czexit” but does want changes to the bloc’s rules on free movement of capital, goods, labour and services.
An ex-Communist who served up doughnuts to woo voters, Babis has a net worth of US$4.1 billion according to the 2017 Forbes list of global billionaires, making him richer than US President Donald Trump, who is worth US$3.1 billion (2.63 billion euros) on the same list.
Thanks to a father who he claims he “co-founded foreign trade in Slovakia” under communism, Babis grew up on the road, attending elementary school in Paris and high school in Geneva.
His work ethic and knack for making money came young.
“I worked since age 15, delivered milk, unloaded parcels at the station, did decorating, built weekend houses, all to make money,” he once said.
After earning an economics degree, he followed in his father’s footsteps and worked as a sales representative in Morocco in 1985 to 1991.
When the Velvet Revolution toppled totalitarian rule in 1989, Babis returned home to see his country split into two states and to find himself jobless.
Born on Sept 2, 1954 in Bratislava, Babis lives with his second wife Monika, 20 years his junior and mother of two of his children, whom he married at the controversial Stork Nest farm in the summer.
The former tennis and volleyball player also has two children with his ex-wife.
“I’m a wealthy man. I have made almost all of my dreams come true. I have earned billions with honest work,” he once said. — AFP