Populist Wave Reaches Czech Rep.

By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, NB] Telegraph-Journal

The populist wave engulfing eastern Europe has reached the Czech Republic.

Andrej Babis, a billionaire who rode a wave of anger toward the corruption and complacency of conventional politics, won a resounding legislative victory in October.

His anti-establishment party, ARNO – a Czech acronym for Action of Dissatisfied Citizens --overpowered the Czech Republic’s mainstream parties in legislative elections.

Founded in 2012, it gained nearly 30 per cent of the vote, for 78 of the 200 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The right-of-centre Civic Democratic Party (ODS) came second with 11.3 per cent, good for 25 seats.

The Social Democrats, who had finished first in the previous election, came in a distant sixth with just over seven per cent and 15 seats. 

The Christian Democrats, another party that traces its roots to the country’s founding, got less than six per cent and just 10 seats.

Another surprise was the strong showing of Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), the extreme right-wing party of entrepreneur Tomio Okamura. Its leader, of mixed Czech and Japanese-Korean descent, has lived in the Czech Republic since he was a child. 

His party won 10.6 per cent of the ballots cast and elected 22 deputies.

“The elections have confirmed the downfall of traditional parties,” contended Milos Gregor, an analyst at the International Institute for Political Science at Masaryk University in Brno. 

Babis ran on nationalist themes such as opposition to immigration, along with a promise to use his business skills to streamline government, reduce red tape and fight corruption.

Okamura said he opposed the country’s mainstream parties and political establishment because its message is “pro-Brussels, pro-multiculturalism and pro-Islam.”

He has called for a referendum on continued membership in the European Union. “We are living under a total EU dictatorship,” he declared. “Not even the Soviet Union dared to dictate to us who should live here and who shouldn’t.” 

The SPD hosted a conference of European far-right leaders in Prague on Dec. 16.

In the Czech Republic, which accepted only 12 out of the 1,600 refugees it was required to take in under the EU migrant redistribution system, Babis has shown a willingness to work with Okamura and his SPD.

Anxieties about national identity are particularly strong in the former Communist countries like the Czech Republic, which emerged after the “velvet divorce,” when Czechoslovakia split into two nations in 1993.

Slovaks, who long felt neglected in the old bi-national state, proved themselves to the world as a new nation, “while the Czechs were left with nostalgia and regret,” explained Jiri Pehe, the director of New York University’s academic centre in Prague.

That lack of clear identity, he remarked, has led Czechs to become anxious about globalization and migration, and so they are “looking for some protection.”

Babis controls a conglomerate with interests in agribusiness, forestry, food processing and chemicals that stretches across several European countries, with an estimated worth of more than $4 billion.

As the new prime minister, though one running a minority government, he has promised to protect Czechs from overreach by Brussels, though he also wants to remain in the EU.

But he also stressed that Prague needs to develop closer ties with all potential trading partners, including Russia. Some of his allies are supporters of Vladimir Putin and might try to convince him to tilt toward Moscow.

The days of idealistic leaders like the writer Vaclav Havel, the first president of the country, who died in 2011, are long gone.