Democracy Digest: New Czech Election Rules Could Harm Babis’s Chances

Predictably, Prime Minister Andrej Babis was most unhappy with the ruling. He complained that the court is interfering with the political process because campaigning has effectively already started for the elections on October 8-9. It's suspected that the haste shown by President Zeman to announce the date for the autumn vote came after he got wind that the court was looking at the issue, and was intended to open the way for just such an objection. Having disregarded this opportunity to delay the ruling, Chief Justice Pavel Rychetsky should probably watch his back for the remaining couple of years of the vindictive president's term.

For Babis, meanwhile, the change to the rules will further challenge his efforts to remain in power. The government's erratic handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is already eating away at support for his ANO party, while the opposition finally appears to be getting its act together. A January poll showed the new liberal Pirate/Stan coalition just 1.5 percentage points behind ANO at 25 per cent, with the centre-right Spolu coalition just behind on 18.5 per cent. Estimates suggest that ANO needed around 19,000 votes for each of the 78 seats it won in the 2017 election; Stan's six deputies had 44,000 votes behind each of them.

One positive for the billionaire prime minister, however, could be that the main winners from the rule change would likely be the smaller parties on the left and extreme right - CSSD, KSCM, SPD and Tricolor - that look to be ANO's only potential partners should it get the chance to form a governing coalition after the vote.

The sun rises behind the Liberty Statue on the top of Gellert Hill, a landmark of the Hungarian capital, in Budapest, Hungary, 27 December 2020. EPA-EFE/Balazs Mohai

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