Page 15 - bne IntelliNews Georgia country report November 2017

Central Europe
November 11, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 15
winning enough votes to get into the second round in which he could conceivably defeat Zeman.
Populist trip to Babis's provincial dairy
The populist president on November 8 was on an- other of his regular trips to the provinces, where he is far more popular than in Prague. Zeman chose to visit an Olma dairy, owned by Agrofert, the main holding in Babis's agrochemicals, food- stuffs and media business empire. While at the dairy, Zeman took a swing at supermarkets, call- ing for margins on products to be regulated.
"Let's try to regulate chain stores and let's try to create a national chain store with adequate margins like other countries have," he said.
Czechia has just been through a butter scare where fears of shortages, hyped by the media, sent prices soaring by around 100% in many cases as people hoarded butter. Prices fell again this week as the panic faded, but the scare has
left a bad taste in the population’s mouth.
Zeman’s popularist rhetoric can be seen as part of some early campaigning for the election, for which candidates had to declare by November
6. Zeman is the frontrunner and is bound to get into the first round according to the latest polls, but some surveys, taken before the entrance of Topolanek, have shown that he might be narrowly defeated in a run-off with Drahos.
Zeman said adequate margins would help the Czech Republic be “more self-sufficient” in many types of food and agricultural commodities that can be produced in the country.
The president has been attacking supermarkets for years. In 2015 he claimed that some stores have margins as high as 63% and were holding the country’s economic development back. In 2013 he prosed the state set up its own supermarket chain in a throwback to socialist days.
Slovaks reject neo-fascists and back pro-EU candidates in regional elections
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Analysts concluded that Slovaks had better grasped the threat of extremism as the results from the weekend regional elections brought about a decisive defeat for neo-fascist and anti- European Union candidate Marian Kotleba, governor of the Banska Bystrica region.
Prime Minister Robert Fico, meanwhile, was also digesting a reverse after four members of his leftist Smer-Social Democracy Party were also defeated, meaning his party, which has governed Slovakia for five years, will now only lead two
of eight regional governments, with candidates backed by opposition parties leading five.
Following his victory over Kotleba, the independent and businessman Jan Lunter, told reporters: “The first thing I’ll do in the governor’s office will be to open all the doors and windows and let in some fresh air. And as I think it’s important that we go back to the European Union again, we will put up its flag in the office again, back where it belongs.”
“We belong in Europe, we don’t want to leave,” Lunter, whose candidacy was supported by the governing coalition and opposition, added. He took 48.53% of the vote compared to Kotleba’s 23.24%.
President Andrej Kiska, also an independent, declared after casting his ballot that it was time