Parliamentary Election in the Czech Republic with Martin Ehl [PODCAST]

What are the polls telling us about the forthcoming October election in the Czech Republic? Will Andrej Babiš come back to power? What are some of the issues and scandals that dominate the political debate ahead of the election? And what will be the Czech position on Ukraine, the NATO, and security under the new government? Leszek Jazdzewski (Fundacja Liberte!) talks with Martin Ehl, a journalist and writer, a reporter of Czech economic daily Hospodářské noviny (hn.cz) since 2001; since January of 2006 till June 2018 Chief International Editor, now Chief Analyst. He was previously working in various Czech written media since 1992. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Visegrad Insight (visegradinsight.eu), and a council member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is covering primarily Central Europe, transatlantic relations, security issues, and business related to defense and energy.

Leszek Jazdzewski (LJ): Before we discuss what is happening in the Czech Republic at the moment, let us look at the past elections. The members of the current ruling coalition (the Spolu coalition under the leadership of Petr Fiala, the current prime minister) were not the frontrunners in the polls, but they managed to secure a victory, which seemed rather surprising back then. What happened four years ago, and which parties does the current ruling coalition consist of at the moment?

Martin Ehl (ME): It is a rather long story. At that time, four years ago, it was more about anti-populist, anti-Babiš sentiment than it is now. There was a huge will and struggle to get over Andrej Babiš and his movement, the ANO party, which led to the creation of a united front – to use the old-fashioned term – and, basically, a notion that there is, possibly, a new beginning for the Czech politics after Babiš.

Moreover, there was no significant gap in the polls between the frontrunner – which was at the time, as it is now, Babiš’s ANO – and the second one, the Spolu alliance, which consisted of three parties. The main party was the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), a traditional conservative party. Then, there was the TOP 09 party, which is small, and probably more pro-European – which is the main difference between ODS, which is, traditionally, a Eurosceptic party. The third party was the Christian Democrats, the KDU-ČSL party.

The latter two small parties would probably not be able to cross the 5% threshold to the parliament – neither four years ago, nor now – so they have created the coalition, a rather conservative one, to show unity against Babiš. This is exactly what they are trying to repeat right now.

However, the situation is different now also for the other two parties, which were part of the previous government, which is now coming to an end. These two parties are STAN (the movement of mayors and independents, which is a liberal and pro-European party) and the Pirate Party (which was, at that time, following more of a liberal model oriented towards younger people). These two parties also created a coalition four years ago.

This means that back then there were two opposition coalitions going against Babiš – one more conservative, one more liberal, and the topic that united them was ‘Everybody against Babiš!’. On this premise, they created the coalition four years ago. In the end, it was thus a five-party coalition, and coalitions of this size are hard to manage due to all of the clashes and different interests within.

During the last four years, one of the parties (the Pirates) left the coalition, because their minister (who was at the time also the head of the party) had struggled to reform one of the key registries in the digital area of the state – namely, the construction register. The party that portrayed itself before as a kind of youngish and digital-state-oriented party, was not able to implement one successful program in this area. It was a big disaster for the government two years ago. As a result, they left the government coalition, and now it is a four-party coalition – still with the majority in the parliament.

The three abovementioned parties (Civic Democratic Party, Christian Democrats, and TOP 09) go into the October election as the Spolu coalition, then there is the STAN party and the Pirate Party. This is the state of the play from the government’s side at the moment in comparison to what happened in the last four years.

Of course, now, as a ruling party, the governing politicians can be much more easily criticized. They were not quite successful in terms of implementing various reforms and promises they made four years ago. This also contributes significantly to their popularity, because they are now trailing behind much more than they did four years ago.

LJ: What are the main lines of attack from ANO on Spolu and the ruling coalition? Or, maybe, people have already forgotten about ANO and Andrej Babiš? Will Babiš come back to power? And if so, in what capacity?

ME: The Czech people are tired. Basically, they understand that Babiš used the opportunity to grab some EU money, but they do not care at the moment, because it has been going on for far too long. For Babiš, it is only one of the topics on which he can say, ‘Look, they are politicizing, I did not do anything wrong.’ However, for his voters, this is not a topic.

The others are tired of that, because the courts were not able to produce the results. This kind of behavior is familiar to other post-communist societies, as sometimes it is much more valued to go around the system and use it for your own purposes, than if you work and behave according to the rules. Babiš is an opportunist – he does only what he thinks is good for him at the given moment

When it comes to the main line of attacks, the current government was not able to deliver the things which people would consider important for their daily life. There was a struggle with high inflation, they promised some reforms on the business and the digital state side – the latter was completely botched. All this means that for the average voter it is quite difficult to associate this government with anything good.

Meanwhile, the governing parties are playing the security or defense card and claim that they are successful in supporting Ukraine. However, for the average people, this does not make any sense, because unlike in Poland, for example, other countries do not feel directly threatened by Russia. Therefore, this seems more like using the topic of the support for refugees from Ukraine as a tool against the government – because not only Babiš, but also more extreme parties are saying, ‘Well, you are giving money not to our people, the Czech people.’ This is a mantra for the critics of the government – you are not supporting our people, you are supporting others. And then, you can use it in connection with many other topics – from social support to the housing crisis. This is a huge thing in the Czech Republic. For many people, inflation is a topic which was not tackled by the government at all, especially in the big cities.

Babiš is very skillfully using various problems and scandals for his own benefit. Last time, we had a big Bitcoin scandal, but there was no one big scandal, but many small mistakes done by the ministers from the governing coalition that Babiš is playing off of on social media (Instagram and TikTok). He is also targeting young voters, which might seem surprising. Of course, it is not only Babiš, but also some of the extremist parties that are using such strategies to attract first-time voters – and young voters in general. If we look at the campaigns, one can see that Babiš is probably using much more money than it is allowed for campaigns, but it cannot be proven. Still, his team seems highly skilled and uses every technique and political tool available to explore different possibilities.

Eventually, Babiš could win the election, but decide that he will not become the prime minister. Him driving from the back seat is a realistic option, with the shadow prime minister instead of Andrej Babiš. This is a very likely scenario, because Babiš is not the youngest. He likes power, but he can have the power without all the boring duties of being the prime minister.

Finally, if we look at the numbers and trends, ANO now has more than 30% of support, and this support is still growing. This growth is coming from his possible coalition partners, which are an extremist Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD), a nationalistic isolationist Eurosceptical party, which now has 11% (which dropped from previous 13%). Therefore, the trend shows a decline for SPD and the people going to Babiš.

The same thing is happening to the Stačilo! (‘Enough!’) Grouping, which is a cover for communists and some social Democrats – their support is also going down. Actually, it was like the last time, around 7%. And let me remind you that there is a five-percent threshold.

As such, it will really depend on how many parties of this kind of this extremist part will go over the 5%, because we have another extremist party which can possibly go over the threshold – the Motorists for Themselves, a right-wing party with that has an appeal for young, less educated first-time voters. They succeeded to put two MPs into the parliament during the European election, and they rode the wave on that. Now, they are going under 4%.

The three conservative parties have now over 20% and their support is going up a little bit, which is surprising because of the Bitcoin scandal. The European liberals, which are a part of the governing coalition at the moment, are in the third or fourth position in the polls. The fifth place is taken by the Pirates, with 8-9% (in the last polls, they are going a little bit down). Therefore, purely mathematically, at the moment, the current government would not be a government coalition, as it would not be able to put together a majority.

Babiš would have much more than 100 seats in the lower chamber. We have 200 deputies, so you need 101 to secure the majority. However, as I mentioned, Babiš is taking the voters from the two extremist parties, which, of course, would be happy to govern and to impose things like the referendum about NATO and the EU. But for Babiš, this would probably be maybe too much.

For the last couple of weeks, there here has been widespread speculation in the political circles that, maybe, a more viable thing for Babiš would be to not be connected to these extremists. Of course, it would be easy for him to either create a minority government with their support for certain issues. It is also possible that they would be split after the lost elections in the ODS party on this conservative party. That part of ODS would support a big coalition with Babiš for the sake of the big danger in the East, showing that we have to be united so they can create a nice narrative around that, and that they can somehow divide the powers.

This, however, is unacceptable for the current leader of ODS, Prime Minister Petr Fiala, who recently made an official deal with another big governing party, STAN, for a place on the list,  provided that they would not go into the coalition with Babiš.

Interestingly, there was also speculation that for the sake of democracy and security, they would create one big coalition. This could lead to many different scenarios. The most probable one at the moment is that Babiš will go with the extremists – either a minority or a majority – but it would be a dangerous move for him.

LJ: Will the pro-Western, pro-Ukrainian course of the Czech government change? What kind of a government will be created? Should we expect a full-blown comeback of populist politics that we remember from four years ago?

ME: To answer this question, I would look at Slovakia and Hungary, as we are not them, and the situation here is different, because many of our institutions operate differently. We have the Second Chamber, which is in the hands of what is now the governing coalition. We have independent courts and media, but the new government will probably look like what we see now in Hungary and Slovakia vis-à-vis Ukraine.

On the other hand, the Czech companies are making good money, so I would not put the Czech Republic in the same basket with Slovakia and Hungary until they prove that they are going in this direction.

Nothing is given until you vote. Basically, people from public media are afraid that they will put together a public television and a public radio, and they will govern it and squeeze it in a Slovakian or a Hungarian way. Nevertheless, we still have very strong independent media, which is a problem in Hungary and Slovakia. As such, there will be some nuances and differences. Therefore, even though from abroad it may look the same, there are many aspects which, hopefully, will be different. I hope I am not mistaken in that.

This podcast is produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with Movimento Liberal Social and Fundacja Liberté!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are responsible for the content or for any use that be made of.