Page 14 - bne IntelliNews Georgia country report November 2017

Central Europe
November 11, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 14
Slovaks reject neo- fascists and back pro-EU candidates in regional elections
bne IntelliNews
Andrej Babis, the 'anti-politician' set to become Czechia's next prime minister, has sent a letter
to foreign ambassadors in Prague arguing that
he is not the eurosceptic that he is commonly depicted as but a “eurocritic” who wants an active discussion about EU reforms, Hospodarske noviny reported on November 9.
Babis, a billionaire entrepreneur who is head of the anti-establishment Ano movement which swept to victory in the late October general election, winning 78 of parliament's 200 lower house seats, also reportedly denied being any kind of threat to democracy and cited Michael Bloomberg and Emmanuel Macron as models.
The letters to foreign ambassadors, written in English, were sent out with translated copies of Babis's book, “What I dream of when I happen to sleep”. Ano, which presently looks most likely to attempt a minority government, has no intention of taking Czechia out of the EU or Nato, he wrote, but would make concrete proposals for reform that would be in line with Czech national interests. Pro-EU politicians are concerned, however,
that Babis is set to permit the introduction of a referendum law which would pave the way for a national poll on whether there should be a Czexit — Czechia, a nation of 10.6m, is by and large highly eurosceptic.
The Civic Democratic Party (ODS), which placed second in the election with 25 seats, is among the parties that has refused to countenance forming
Andrej Babis (centre), pictured two years ago at a Europa Forum in Austria.
a ruling coalition with Babis, partly because of the unresolved EU subsidy fraud investigation against the ANO leader. The ODS chairman Petr Fiala has suggested that Babis is working to a plan which would see him create a power pact with President Milos Zeman, if the incumbent is re-elected in the upcoming January presidential election. Kremlin- friendly, eurosceptic Zeman might essentially then take charge of foreign policy, analysts have sug- gested, an occurrence that would spread anxi-
ety among those fearful that Czechia's western orientation may be at stake.
The Babis-owned daily Mlada fronta Dnes on November 9 reported that the Ano leader believed a majority government would be possible if ODS would agree to negotiate its formation. However, Babis reportedly remarked: “What am I supposed to do, beg them on my knees?”
Pravo daily, meanwhile, reported political analyst Jiri Pehe as saying that the ODS “godfather” system of oligarchic corruption was at its height under former PM Mirek Topolanek and that in considering his last-minute bid for the presidency people should not discount a comment this week from ex-foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg that outspoken Topolanek became the puppet
of the godfathers and is also a lout. Given that the probability of him winning the presidency is slight, Topolanek, according to Pehe, might really be running to prevent Jiri Drahos, a chemist
who served as president of the Czech Academy of Sciences from 2009 to earlier this year, from