Czech Republic - 2023 Presidential Election
The Czech Republic is a multiparty parliamentary democracy. Legislative authority is vested in a bicameral parliament, consisting of a Chamber of Deputies (Poslanecka snemovna) and a Senate (Senat). The president is head of state and appoints a prime minister and cabinet ministers. The constitution and law provide citizens the ability to choose their government in free and fair periodic elections held by secret ballot and based on universal and equal suffrage.
Though Czech presidents wield much less executive power than Czech prime ministers, they still have a considerable influence on domestic and foreign policy and on the atmosphere in the country. Over the past 20 years, the Czech Republic has had two euroskeptic presidents in Vaclav Klaus and Milos Zeman. Many experts feel that this is one reason why the Czech Republic is one of the most euroskeptic countries in the EU.
The law provides for freedom of expression, including for the press and other media, and the government generally respected this right. An independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combined to promote freedom of expression, including for the media. The law provides for some limitations to this freedom, including in cases of hate speech, Holocaust denial, and denial of Communist-era crimes.
President Zeman, his spokesperson, and political parties on the far right and left publicly alleged bias in both public and private media outlets. The Freedom and Direct Democracy Party, the Communist Party, and to a lesser degree the governing ANO party openly sought to appoint politically polarizing figures to public media supervisory boards.
Eight candidates will faced off in the January 2023 Czech presidential election, and one thing is certain: The next head of state will be from the opposition. What makes these elections extraordinary is that none of the candidates represents the three-party governing coalition, It is a battle among opposition parliamentary candidates.
No candidate was expected to win a majority of the votes in the first round on 14-15 January 2023. The field would narrow to the top two candidates in a run-off on January 27 and 28.
The winner will need to re-establish the presidential role after the outgoing president, Milos Zeman, overstepped his constitutional rights several times. The 78-year-old has been in power since 2023, having served two five-year terms. He was criticised for seeking to improve relations with China and Russia until the Ukraine war erupted, and he often made anti-refugee and anti-Muslim comments. He also came under fire for intervening in Czech politics.
Zeman had gone beyond his constitutional power numerous times by being overly involved in politics. He made himself more visible than previous presidents. Now it is up to the new head of state whether they will continue in Zeman's footsteps or respect their role as defined by the constitution.
Former Prime Minister Andrej Babis, an oligarch and ally of far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was acquitted of fraud, boosting his prospects in the presidential election which pitted him against a former general and a former university rector. Babis, whose company Agrofert owned two prominent newspapers and other media outlets, placed control of these assets into trust funds in 2017. Observers maintained that this measure did not insulate media from the influence of the government. In September the municipal government with jurisdiction over Prime Minister Babis due to his place of residence found him in breach of the media ownership law and fined him 250,000 crowns ($11,300).
On 09 January 2023, just a few days before polls open, the chairman of the opposition Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) party was acquitted of the charge of being an accomplice in an EU subsidy fraud, a ruling that could improve his chances of being elected head of state. One of the first people to congratulate him on his acquittal was Hungary's Orban, who advised his friend to keep on fighting.
The ruling marked the end of a six-year case related to a farm known as the Stork's Nest, which was purchased by the Babis-owned holding Agrofert in 2006 and developed into a luxury leisure resort. Two years later, the resort was taken out of the holding, and Babis transferred the shares to his children and other relatives.
"The acquittal gives Andrej Babis and his team the opportunity to launch a broad-based campaign and to try and tip the balance of power, which until now did not look good for the former prime minister, in his favor," said Martin Buchtik, director of the Prague-based STEM Institute for Empirical Research, adding that it is now almost certain that Babis will reach the second round of the election.
STEM published the results of a new poll that indicated that Babis would get 27.9%, General Petr Pavel 26.7% and Danuse Nerudova 24.4% of the votes in the first round. But both the STEM poll and others published in recent days suggest Babis would lose the second round on January 27–28 by about 10-20 percentage points. "All available data suggests that it is highly improbable he will win the second round. Something extraordinary would have to happen for a candidate who lags so far behind his potential opponent in the second round to ultimately win the election," Buchtik said.
For a large proportion of Czech voters, Babis is simply unelectable. In addition to his political and economic power, he controls large swaths of the Czech media, which many consider a conflict of interest. He also came in for criticism for his populist and pro-Hungary policies.
On the other hand, with his pledge to increase pensions, Babis has won over many voters — especially pensioners, who make up about 25% of the electorate. Although this was enough to make ANO the strongest political party in the Czech Republic, it likely won't be enough to get him the 50% of votes needed in the second round to be elected president.
Babis knows this, which is why he visited French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on the day after his acquittal. ANO and Macron's Renaissance party are both part of the Renew Europe political group in the European Parliament. "The meeting with Emmanuel Macron shows the public that he still has political standing," said political analyst Jana Kubacek, of the Czech News Agency. The office of the French president emphasized that the meeting with Babis was not a declaration of support for his campaign.
In matters of prestige, however, Babis had a strong competitor in the election: General Pavel, 61, a former chairman of the NATO Military Committee and former chief of the General Staff of the Czech Armed Forces, looks back on a glittering 30-year career in the military. He was awarded the French Legion of Honor for evacuating a French unit of UN troops from a base that was surrounded by warring enemy troops in 1993 during hostilities between Croatia and Serbia in the Yugoslav Wars.
His military experience features largely in his electoral slogan: "leading with experience and calm in difficult times." However, his membership in the Communist Party before the collapse of communism in 1989 and the fact that he went through military intelligence training in the late 1980s could prove a stumbling block.
Former university rector Danuse Nerudova also has a chance. Polls suggest young voters in particular intend to vote for the 44-year-old economist, who would be the country's first woman president if elected. "The key to all change is the reform of the education system in the Czech Republic," Nerudova recently told Czech Radio.
Many voters who don't want Babis will choose either Nerudova or Pavel, both of whom are backed by the current coalition government. As soon as one pulls ahead, the other will lose ground.
While Pavel and Nerudova both had a clear pro-EU stance, Babis regularly tried to harness the widespread euroskepticism for his own ends and likes to rail against the bloc. But this does not mean he is averse to getting financial support from Brussels: His Agrofert group is one of the biggest recipients of EU subsidies in the Czech Republic.
Billionaire former prime minister Andrej Babis and retired NATO general Petr Pavel topped the first round of the Czech presidential election. Babis won 36.02 percent and Pavel 34.38, while economist Danuse Nerudova came third with 13.85 percent, according to results from the Czech Statistical Office, with 90 percent of votes counted. None of the five other candidates earned more than seven percent.
Babis and Pavel now entered a run-off on January 27-28 in a bid to become only the fourth president since the Czech Republic was founded in 1993 following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Voters in the Czech Republic chose Petr Pavel as their next president. The 61-year-old Pavel, who until a few years ago was largely unknown to the Czech general public, swept to a clear and convincing victory over the weekend, garnering about 58% of all votes cast. Turnout in the election was a record 70%. His opponent, Andrej Babis, the 68-year-old populist billionaire, former prime minister and head of the opposition Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) party, managed just 42%. After the first round, both candidates had been neck and neck.
Before the collapse of communism in 1989, Pavel was a member of the Communist Party — like most professional soldiers in the former Czechoslovakia at the time. He also underwent military intelligence training while serving in the Czechoslovak army.
Before the election runoff, Babis attempted to sway voters by saying that Pavel would lead the country into war while he, Babis, would secure peace in Ukraine. But the claims did not help Babis, who has himself repeatedly been accused of working as an informant for the communist-era secret police.
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