Chairman of opposition “ANO” (YES) movement Andrej Babiš arrives to cast his ballot at a polling station in Ostrava, Czech Republic, on Friday. The populist billionaire won a parliamentary election on Saturday. Petr David Josek/AP hide caption
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Petr David Josek/AP
PRAGUE — Populist Czech billionaire Andrej Babiš won a parliamentary election Saturday in a a political comeback that put the country on a course away from supporting Ukraine and toward Hungary and Slovakia, which have taken a pro-Russian path.
With the votes from almost 98% of polling station counted by the Statistics Office, Babiš’s ANO (YES) movement captured 35% of the vote followed by the pro-Western coalition of Prime Minister Petr Fiala with 23.0%. The coalition defeated him in the 2021 election.
The two-day election filled 200 seats in the lower house of the Czech parliament. A group of mayors known as STAN, also a member of Fiala’s government, had 11.1% of the vote, with another ally of Fiala, the Pirates party, reaching 8.7%.
The major anti-migrant force, the Freedom and Direct Democracy party, got 7.9% while a right-wing group calling itself the Motorists received 6.8%. The two are potential partners for Babiš if he wants to have a majority government.
