The billionaire of Slovak origin, Andrej Babiš, and his centrist movement ANO (Yes) won the Czech general election on Saturday with 29.64 percent of the votes. As many as nine political entities in total managed to win seats in the lower chamber of the Czech Parliament. The voter turnout was 60.84 percent.
We're turning into a pro-European island. That was the reaction of Robert Fico to the election in the Czech Republic. As he said, Slovakia has to remain being viewed as a "clearly pro-European country". "We are ready to be a part of the group of countries who would like to proceed faster in the integration of the Union," said Fico, adding that the EU is the only alternative for Slovakia.
The coalition Most-Hid party welcomed the fact that the pro-European parties KDU-CSL and TOP 09 managed to win seats in the Czech Parliament. According to Most-Hid leader Bela Bugár, these two parties managed to do so despite a difficult battle against various populist and anti-system political entities.
The Czech Republic is the closest country to Slovakia, so it is important for it to have a good and stable government, stated Opposition OLaNO MP Veronika Remišová. She said that it would not be easy to create a stable government, as too many parties won seats in the Czech Parliament. "Before the election, much was said about the rise of extremist parties, so I'm glad that the number of legislators elected for extremist parties has actually dropped," she said.
Opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) leader Richard Sulík congratulated the winner of the Czech election Andrej Babiš on the election result. "It's too soon for any further thoughts until a government is set up," said Sulík in this regard.
The political scene in the Czech Republic has changed fundamentally following the general election on Saturday, stated coalition Slovak National Party vice-chairman Jaroslav Paška on RTVS's programme 'O 5 Minut 12' (Five Minutes to Twelve) on Sunday. According to Paška, European themes are more significantly influencing decisions on the future of the Czech Republic. In the context of the outcome of the Czech election, Slovak MEP Boris Zala has the feeling that people in the Czech Republic wanted to experiment and look for unconventional solutions. He said that the immediate social situation and unemployment do not play as important a role as in the past. European integration, sovereignty issues, the euro currency and migration have become the dominant topics among the Czechs. Another Slovak MEP Ivan Štefanec stated that the political map in the Czech Republic was changing rapidly.
According to the Slovak press, it is the Czech Republic that lost in its general election. According to the Hospodárske noviny economic daily, Czechs do not believe that Babiš is facing serious criminal proceedings and gave him the chance to become Prime Minister. The independent daily Dennik N compared the current results with the 1994 general election results in Slovakia when Vladimír Mečiar won with the HZDS or Movement for a democratic Slovakia. According to the independent daily, the Slovak government faced fierce criticism due to the deficit of democracy. The SME daily stated that it is not individual parties that lost the election but the whole of the Czech Republic. "It's the end of the clash of ideas, there comes a time when voters are lured by populistic slogans," commented the daily SME in an article entitled "The day when Prague also fell". The Pravda daily wrote that the world of traditional political blocs was over, referring to the past dominance of the ODS and ČSSD parties.
