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For his part, Babis has always written Million Moments off as opposition supporters who are sore losers. Both he and President Zeman paint them as Prague liberals who want to ignore the votes of poorer, less well educated voters in the provinces (who tend to vote for them).
Agrofertisation
Million Moments launched its campaign in February 2018 shortly after Babis
– who had been finance minister in
the previous Social Democrat-led government – won the 2017 election and ruled as caretaker premier with
the backing of the president and extremist parties. Later he was able to persuade the Social Democrats to join him as junior partners in a minority government.
The protesters see Babis as a grave threat to Czech democracy not so
much because of his ideology – he has none – but because of the way he has accumulated power, his alliance with President Zeman and extremist parties, and the clear conflict of interest between his political power and his continuing control of his Agrofert agro-chemical conglomerate.
Babis is supreme within his own party, which remains little more than his personal vehicle, and has filled the government and administration with personal appointees, including several from Agrofert.
“The connection of Andrej Babis
and the state is really something unprecedented,” Roll says. “Agrofert
is growing inside the state and state officials are starting to care more about the interests of Andrej Babis than about the public.”
“Institutions were strong but after eight years of Andrej Babis we can see they are getting weaker and weaker,” he adds. The step-by-step way this “Agrofertisation” of the state has proceeded has made it more difficult to mobilise people, he points out.
Babis’ power partly rests on pro-Russian President Zeman, who initially allowed him to rule without winning a vote
of confidence in 2017 and has hinted that he will do so again if the October general election does not produce
a clear majority.
Babis, together with Zeman, have also co-operated with extremist parties such as the Czech Communist party and
“It’s really absurd and for ordinary people they don’t understand why something like that can take so much time – I don’t understand it either,” says Roll. “It questions our faith in justice.”
Meanwhile, repeated foot dragging and appeals by ANO-controlled ministries
“The worst scenario would be that despite all the scandals there is not a political reaction"
the far-right SPD of Tomio Okamura, regularly consulting with them and relying on them in key votes.
“He is legitimising extremists. This is
a really huge problem for the future,” says Roll. “[When] Andrej Babis is not a candidate, there will be new populists who will use the way he has built. We must be ready for this,” he adds.
Kicked into touch
Million Moments also argues Babis’ business empire constitutes an insurmountable conflict of interest,
a view that has now been officially supported by the European Commission, which has threatened to stop reimbursing Czech spending on EU subsidies until the government clarifies its policy.
Babis is separately under investigation by Czech police for alleged fraud over his use of EU funds for building his Storks Nest conference centre, 60km south of Prague.
Babis dismisses both the EU and Czech probes as political attacks and has successfully kicked them into touch ahead of the elections.
Despite five years of police investigations, the new Supreme Prosecutor recently delayed a decision on whether to put Babis on trial
over Storks Nest, and this is now conveniently likely to come after the election. His predecessor had resigned, complaining of interference by ANO’s justice minister, who had herself been appointed in place of an insufficiently loyal predecessor.
have also delayed any significant EU action until after the election. The government has recently asked the EU for another two months to respond on the conflict of interest issue, putting it conveniently beyond the election.
Despite the EU refusal to reimburse the Czech state for EU subsidies given to Agrofert, the government has continued to send money to the conglomerate,
the largest private Czech recipient of
EU money, and is pursuing legal action against the EU for not reimbursing them.
The Commission has painstakingly stuck to the rulebook and has not escalated the dispute in the way it has done with Poland and (belatedly) with Hungary. “The EU is afraid of making him another [Viktor] Orban,” says Roll. “They don’t want to push Andrej Babis too much
or our society too much, it would be a disaster, so they are being careful.”
For Roll and his supporters, Babis’ use of the state to fight his own personal battles in Brussels, as well as the suspected interference of the justice ministry in
his fraud charges, clearly demonstrate his conflicts of interest and the damage caused by his accumulation of power.
According to David Ondracka, a former head of the Czech branch of the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International, the way Babis has been able to marshal the state to defend his business empire is extraordinary.
“I did not expect such open collaboration of the Czech authorities against the EU,” he says. “They seem to play quite openly
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