Populist billionaire's party wins big in Czech Republic
The centrist ANO movement led by populist billionaire Andrej Babis decisively won the Czech Republic's parliamentary election Saturday in a vote that shifted the country to the right and paved the way for the euroskeptic to lead the country.
With votes from 99.6 percent of all polling stations counted by the Czech Statistics Office, ANO won in a landslide with 29.7 percent of the vote. Since the president usually asks the leader of the strongest party in Parliament's lower house to try to form a new government, Babis could be the country's next prime minister despite allegations of fraud linked to European Union subsidies and other scandals. That would produce another euroskeptic government in Central Europe.
In a blow to the country's traditional political elite, four of the top five vote-getting parties Saturday were ones that have challenged the traditional political mainstream. Some exploit fears of immigration and Islam and have been attacking the country's memberships in the EU and NATO. According to the results, the opposition conservative Civic Democrats came in a distant second, with 11.3 percent of the vote, the strongest mainstream party. The Social Democrats, the senior party in the outgoing government that won the 2013 election, had only 7.7 percent of the vote.
