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January 26, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 2
Tight finish expected in Czech presidential election
the election is seen as crucial because of the country’s ongoing political crisis in forming a government, and the deepening divide between the European Union’s liberal western and populist eastern halves.
“The impact on the mindset [of a change of presi- dent] will be huge,” said Constantin Kinsky, head of the Czech-French Chamber of Commerce.
Zeman has strongly backed populist billion-
aire Andrej Babis’ right to become prime minister following his general election win in October, even though no mainstream party will currently work with him and he faces fraud charges. In return, Babis has backed Zeman as president. Drahos has said he would not nominate Babis as premier while he is under investigation, though Zeman has made it clear that if he loses the presidential election he would use his second and final right to officially nominate Babis before Drahos would have the chance to take over in March.
Zeman, once a strong supporter of the EU and even of the Czech Republic joining the Eurozone, now flirts with the far right by calling for a ref- erendum on whether the country should remain in the EU (though he says he would vote to stay in). He has also become an apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has led numerous trade delegations to Russia and China to try to build better trade links there.
The president has also been dogged by allegations that his campaign is partly funded from Russian sources, while the Kremlin has been accused of helping to spread online disinformation against his rival.
Drahos, by contrast, firmly backs EU membership
and wants the country to stay facing West rather than East. In the final TV debate on January 25 he hammered away at Zeman's controversial advisers, Martin Nejedly and Vladimir Mlynar. Nejedly used to run LukOil's operations in
the Czech Republic and is his key campaign fundraiser. Neither adviser has won the security clearance that such aides normally require.
Zeman, a former Social Democrat premier who now appears on far right platforms, has sought
to depict his rival as an out of touch liberal elit- ist. In particular Zeman has tried to tar Drahos
as a supporter of EU quotas that would relocate refugees in the Czech Republic on the basis that he once signed a petition deploring the ferociously anti-immigrant mood in the country.
Drahos, a former head of the Academy of Sci- ences, refutes this, saying he has been opposed to the quota scheme all along. In his turn, he has at- tacked Zeman for dividing Czech society rather than uniting it, for putting at risk the country's Western links, and for demeaning the presidency by his vulgar remarks and swearing.
A lot will depend on the turnout of Zeman’s poorer, rural and less well educated voters – Zeman won every region in the first round apart from Prague, the second wealthiest city in the EU's eastern member states – as well as voters' reaction to the performance of the two contenders in the two television duels in the final week of the campaign after the last opinion poll.
The debate on Czech public television was a tougher challenge for Zeman than the first duel on TV Prima on January 23 – watched by 2.6mn amd 2.2mn voters respectively out of a total elec- torate of 8.7mn.
Commercial channel Prima – which instructed its reporters last year to cover the issue of refugees as a threat to the country – staged the debate
like a game show, with a cheering and stamping partisan crowd, and chose populist topics such as migrants, rules on gun ownership, and the smok-