In the parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš's opponents achieved a majority in the Chamber of Deputies.

After counting 99.97 percent of the votes, two opposition alliances have a majority of 108 out of 200 parliamentary seats.

The strongest electorate in the election on Friday and Saturday was the conservative-liberal party union Spolu (Together), with 27.8 percent of the vote and 71 seats in the House of Representatives.

The alliance of pirates and mayor's party, located in the progressive center, achieved a voter share of 15.6 percent and 37 parliamentary seats.

The turnout was 65.4 percent, around four and a half percent higher than four years ago.

Niklas Zimmermann

Editor in politics.

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For the ruling party ANO, favored in recent polls, this is a bitter defeat. The business party, tightly led by Prime Minister Babiš, was only the second strongest party with a 27.1 percent share of the vote. Your previous coalition partner, the social democratic party ČSSD, missed re-entry into the House of Representatives for the first time in the history of the Czech Republic with a share of the vote of 4.7 percent. The unreformed communists, who had previously tolerated the minority government from ANO and ČSSD, suffered the same fate. In contrast, the right-wing populist party SPD managed to re-enter the Czech parliament, although it suffered slight losses with a 9.6 percent share of the vote. As was speculated before the election, it cannot help Babiš to continue to govern.

"The change is here, we are the change"

“The change is here, we are the change,” said Spolu's top candidate Petr Fiala to the cheers of his colleagues at a press conference early on Saturday evening. "This election is a victory for honest and value-based politics," continued Fiala. The 57-year-old political scientist from Brno in South Moravia is claiming the post of Prime Minister for the legislative period that is now beginning. An agreement should be reached quickly with the alliance of pirates and the mayor's party, which, like election winner Spolu, is committed to replacing Babiš. Fiala announced on Saturday evening that negotiations with pirates and mayors would begin within 24 hours. "Both democratic coalitions have a majority in the House of Representatives and thus the chance toto form a majority, ”he said.

The incumbent Prime Minister Babiš has received international attention in the past few days due to the revelations in the “Pandora Papers” about his alleged tax avoidance practices. And the EU public prosecutor's office is also dealing with allegations that Babiš is said to have been in a conflict of interest over Brussels subsidies during his time as Minister of Finance from 2014 and as Prime Minister from 2017. Despite its electoral defeat, the ANO party does not want to give up its claim to government yet. On Saturday evening, Babiš congratulated Spolu's top candidate Fiala on his election victory and announced that he would hold talks with Spolu, but not with the pirates who were reviled as “extreme left” by Prime Minister Babiš during the election campaign.After Fiala clearly expressed coalition preference with pirates and mayors, this hope is likely to be in vain. So Babiš stayed to complain about an alleged media campaign against his party. Judging by this, the result of "ANO" is great.

What is President Zeman doing?

President Miloš Zeman plays a decisive role in the formation of the Czech government. Before the election, the latter had declared that he considered the formation of electoral coalitions of several parties to be “fraud” and that he would appoint the top candidate of the strongest single party as head of government. That will still be Andrej Babiš, because Spolu is an amalgamation of the three center-right parties ODS, TOP09 and KDU-ČSL. In any case, it became known on Saturday that Zeman, who is in poor health, will only be received by Babiš in his residence at Lány Castle around 40 kilometers outside of Prague. Among other things, Zeman and Babiš are united by a political style that is often described as populist and, especially in migration policy, the demonstrative closeness to the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.The forces victorious in the election on Friday and Saturday are expected to adopt a policy more oriented towards the allies in the EU and NATO.

However, after the recent election, Zeman's long-term influence is likely to be limited.

After the previous election in autumn 2017, the forces favored by Zeman ANO, Communists and SPD had a majority in parliament.

Now the declared opponents of Zeman and Babiš have one.

If the president should ignore the election result in spite of all this, the civil society movement “A Million Moments for Democracy” has already announced that it will take to the streets and build on the major protests in autumn 2019.

At that time, around 250,000 people demonstrated in Prague alone for the resignation of Prime Minister Babiš.

Now the Czech voters have shown him the red card.