Czechs vote in ex-Nato general as president

A FORMER army chief and Nato general won the Czech Republic’s presidential election yesterday with a pledge to keep the country firmly anchored in the West.

Petr Pavel, 61, won 58.3 per cent of the vote with all voting districts reporting final results, defeating the billionaire ex-premier Andrej Babis, a dominant but polarising force in Czech politics for a decade.

Mr Pavel, a social liberal who ran as an independent, has backed continued support for Ukraine, something that some doubted would happen under Mr Babis.

The combative business magnate had campaigned on fears of the war in Ukraine spreading, and offered to broker peace talks while suggesting his rival might drag the Czechs into hostilities.

Yesterday, Mr Pavel conveyed a message of unity at a Prague concert venue as results showed he had won.

“Values such as truth, dignity, respect and humility won,” he said.

A career soldier, Mr Pavel joined the army in Communist times. He was decorated with a French military cross for valour during peacekeeping in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and rose to lead the Czech general staff and become chairman of Nato’s military committee for three years before retiring in 2018.

He will replace the outgoing president, Milos Zeman, a divisive figure who had backed Mr Babis as his successor.

Mr Zeman had pushed for closer ties with Beijing and also with Moscow until Russia invaded Ukraine. Mr Pavel’s election will mark a shift away from his stance.

Turnout in the runoff vote was a record 70.2 per cent.

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, congratulated Mr Pavel on Twitter and said he looked forward to close co-operation.

Mr Pavel has backed keeping his country of 10.5 million in the European Union and Nato. He wants to adopt the euro, a topic that successive governments have kept on the back burner, and supports same-sex marriage.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission chief, welcomed Mr Pavel’s “strong commitment to our European values”.