{"id":179468,"date":"2025-10-04T22:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-04T22:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/179468\/"},"modified":"2025-10-04T22:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T22:24:07","slug":"populist-billionaire-andrej-babis-wins-czech-parliamentary-election-czech-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/179468\/","title":{"rendered":"Populist billionaire Andrej Babi\u0161 wins Czech parliamentary election | Czech Republic"},"content":{"rendered":"

The populist billionaire Andrej Babi\u0161 has won the Czech Republic<\/a> parliamentary elections, preliminary results show, but fallen short of the overall majority.<\/p>\n

This win marks a political comeback for Babi\u0161, who was prime minister from 2017 to 2021. He is expected to put the country on a course away from supporting Ukraine and towards Hungary and Slovakia, who have taken a pro-Russian path.<\/p>\n

With the votes from almost 98% of polling stations counted by the Czech statistics office, Babi\u0161\u2019s ANO (YES) party captured 35% of the vote, followed by the pro-western coalition of the prime minister, Petr Fiala, with 23.0%. The coalition defeated Babi\u0161 in the 2021 election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The two-day election filled 200 seats in the lower house of the Czech parliament. A group of mayors known as STAN, also a member of Fiala\u2019s government, received 11.1% of the vote, with another ally of Fiala, the Pirates party, getting an 8.7% share.<\/p>\n

Babi\u0161, a self-proclaimed \u201cTrumpist\u201d, was all smiles and hailed the \u201chistoric result\u201d as \u201cthe absolute peak\u201d of his political career. Voter turnout for this election was high, at almost 69%.<\/p>\n

As Babi\u0161\u2019s ANO did not win the overall majority, the 71-year-old is expected to be invited to lead talks in forming a new coalition. He has already ruled out cooperation with any of the parties that have been in the government after the 2021 election.<\/p>\n

His potential partners include the fringe parties Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), an anti-immigration party that won 7.9% of the vote, and a rightwing group called the Motorists, which received 6.8%.<\/p>\n

He may need to form an alliance with both parties to be able to hold the overall majority. \u201cWe will definitely lead talks with the SPD and the Motorists and seek a single-party government led by ANO,\u201d Babi\u0161 said.<\/p>\n

During its election campaign, ANO advocated for increased welfare spending and a reduction in foreign aid, including donations to Ukraine. It also promised higher wages and pensions, and lower taxes and tax discounts for students and young families \u2013 all in hope of ending austerity.<\/p>\n

An ally of the Hungarian leader, Viktor Orb\u00e1n, Babi\u0161 has teamed up with a number of far-right parties in the Patriots for Europe<\/a> group in the European parliament to challenge the mainstream direction of Europe\u2019s policies, including decarbonisation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The populist billionaire Andrej Babi\u0161 has won the Czech Republic parliamentary elections, preliminary results show, but fallen short…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-179468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}