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Central Europe
November 24, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 13
to become prime minister. Even Ano’s supine deputies would be likely to baulk at that.
Assuming he is able to eventually win a confi- dence vote, Babis may be able to govern as a minority government for a full term by doing deals on individual issues with parties to the left and the right. Babis, like Ano, has no fixed ideology, though the party is a member of the liberal Alde group in the European Parliament. It backs higher state investments (which would appeal to the Social Democrats and the Communists) and lower taxes and less business regulation (supported by a group of four small centre-right parties).
Moreover, if the other parties refused to co- operate, Babis could also threaten to hold fresh elections, which they can scarcely afford to campaign for, and in which he would likely win an even bigger mandate.
Given that Babis holds all the cards, and will only get stronger as he consolidates his grip on the government, it is highly probable that one of the
Czech president says Russian sanctions must end
Robert Anderson in Prague
Czech President Milos Zeman once again
broke ranks with other European leaders and the Czech government by visiting Russian Presi- dent Vladimir Putin and calling for sanctions to be dropped.
Zeman– who has made defending Russia as well as vilifying Islam his main themes – led a huge delegation of Czech businesses to Russia on a four-day trip in three airplanes.
traditional parties will eventually fold and agree to join his cabinet, giving him the necessary political cover, both domestically and internationally.
There is speculation that Petr Fiala, leader of the rightwing Civic Democrats, could be challenged by Vaclav Klaus junior, son of the party’s founder, the former prime minister and president Vaclav Klaus. Klaus junior is regarded as more open to working with Babis, who built up Agrofert in the early 1990s partly under his father by privatising state-owned chemical companies.
But the weakest link is probably the Social Democrats, which are in turmoil after their election fiasco, and are shortly to elect a new leader who could be more open to cutting deals with Babis to maintain the party's influence in state companies such as CEZ. Zeman, a former leader of the Social Democrats who still has great influence there, has backed the party joining Babis’s government. If this happened, the political marriage of convenience between Zeman and Babis would indeed be consummated.
Meeting in Sochi on November 21, Zeman told Putin that sanctions must be stopped. “Mr President, we must put an end to this!” he said.
Putin told Zeman that “a normalisation of relations between Russia and the EU would be in the common interest”.
Putin said that Czech-Russian bilateral relations are developing "despite all difficulties, among