The verdict could give Andrej Babis a boost in his fight for the Czech presidency: Prague’s city court acquitted the former prime minister on Monday in the fraud trial surrounding the “stork’s nest case”. The billionaire founder of Agrofert Holding has been accused of EU subsidy fraud in the millions. If convicted, he faces a three-year suspended prison sentence.
The Public Ministry accused Babis of having surreptitiously obtained a subsidy worth two million euros, to which he was not entitled, by passing it on to family members during the construction of the wellness resort “Ninho da Cegonha”. Initially, it was not clear whether the Public Ministry would appeal the verdict.
Before leaving office, Czech President Milos Zeman wants to award his “friend” Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen with the Order of the White Lion, the highest order of the Czech state. “I think he deserved it, of course,” Zeman said in an interview. Zeman was once extremely skeptical of the Austrian president.
Babis described the trial as a “witch hunt” staged to remove him from politics. The acquittal now comes at an extremely favorable moment for him: presidential elections will be held in the Czech Republic on Friday and Saturday, in which the successor to the outgoing head of state, Milos Zeman, will be determined. Babis is one of the candidates and has now officially certified his alleged innocence. Political scientist Ladislav Mrklas, from the Cevro Institute in Prague, assumes in an interview with the APA that “the psychological and moral barriers between voters would now fall” to give the vote to Babis.
Now acquitted: Former Prime Minister Andrej Babis.
– © Portal / David W. Cerny
The president of the opposition party ANO was considered one of the favorites of the election even before the judge’s verdict. A poll by research firm Stem for CNN Prima News released over the weekend put Babis in first place with 27.9 percent of the vote. Close behind were former NATO general Petr Pavel at 26.7 percent and former dean of the University of Brno Danuse Nerudova at 24.4 percent. The other nine candidates were behind – so it comes down to a three-way battle to enter the second round.
Nerudova and Pavel are changing careers, and neither belongs to any party. In general, very few parties put forward their own candidates – even the bourgeois-liberal coalition led by Prime Minister Petr Fiala is watching the election campaign from the outside and is therefore not in danger of defeat.
Your past is catching up with candidates
What is clear, however, is that the government would be better able to live with it if Nerudova or Pavel won the election than with Babis, currently the loudest opposition politician. Neither Nerudova nor Pavel are populist troublemakers or loudmouths, on the contrary, they emphasize in their election campaigns that they want to pursue a constructive policy.
Although Neurudova – even if the post is mainly representative – wants to be an active president. She wants to publicize issues that are “socially relevant”, she told the Czech magazine Reporter. The economist repeatedly addresses climate change as one of the biggest challenges and is clearly pro-European. The 44-year-old would be the first woman to hold the state’s highest office and, according to Reflex magazine, she is particularly popular with “younger, urban and dynamic” voters.
However, in the end, she got into trouble. The University of Brno fell into disrepute because foreign students could not only acquire their doctorate there through academic achievements. Nerudova is accused of acting too late as dean.
Retired army general Pavel is also struggling with his past, having been a member of the Communist Party. The 61-year-old handles it aggressively, describes it as a mistake and points out that he didn’t do anything serious – because otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to make that career in NATO, where he was chairman from 2015 to 2018 of the Military Committee.
During his election campaign, he appears only as “General Pavel” and advertises with his military experience. He strongly advocates continued support for Ukraine. That’s exactly where Babis comes in. He thinks Tschechein has done enough and now the money should be there “for our people”.
Babis wants to fish in his voter pool: ironically, the billionaire has become the representative of the older and rural sections of the population, which generally have low incomes. But Pavel, who promises order and security, can also score points with this electorate.
Because of this, the Babis team, surrounded by a very professional PR machine, focuses more on Pavel. This would probably be the most dangerous opponent for Babis in the second round, but certainly more difficult than Nerudova.
With academic Babis could be more polarized in the way he likes to do and how it often brings him success: he could present himself as a fighter for working and working people and present Nerudova as a representative of a distant urban elite. The question that remains is why Babis, who likes to present himself as an enforcer and manager, is aiming for the job of president, when in the Czech Republic it is the prime minister who shapes policy. Many commentators speculated that he was evading immunity over the Stork’s Nest case. However, this may be obsolete after the latest judgment.