Betting on his anti-euro, anti-migrant and anti-corruption ticket, the head of the ANO (Yes) movement, Andrej Babis, topped opinion polls before the vote that ends this afternoon.
Far-right and far-left anti-EU parties are expected to make strong gains, which polls suggest could lead to a fragmented parliament with up to nine parties, something analysts warn risks creating chaos and disturbing the Czech Republic’s system of liberal democracy.
“This election is key to the fate of our country,” Babis told reporters after casting his ballot near Prague. “I voted ANO.”
ANO has already held key posts in the outgoing rocky centre-left coalition under Social Democrat Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka, with Babis serving as finance minister from 2014 to May this year.
And despite facing a fraud indictment, Babis captured around 25-30% support in a recent Median agency survey, putting ANO miles ahead of its current coalition partner, the left-wing Social Democrats, who scored just 12.5%.
“For first time, the majority will go to parties protesting in one way or another against the functioning of liberal democracy as we know it,” the leading Hospodarske Noviny daily said in an editorial.
“And for the first time we face the threat that an openly xenophobic, extremist movement will earn more than 10%” of the vote, it added, pointing to the far-right Freedom and Free Democracy (SPD) of Tokyo-born entrepreneur Tomio Okamura.
“These elections are a turning point in the country’s journey, both for its internal functioning and its anchoring in the European Union,” said the daily, adding that “Czech democracy ... has undoubtedly reached a critical point”.
Despite their EU country’s economic success, many Czechs who are heavily in debt or working long hours for low wages feel they have been left behind and are turning to anti-system parties to vent that frustration, Hospodarskie Noviny added.
With unemployment at 3.8% in September, the lowest since 1998, the Czech economy is expected to grow 3.6% this year, according to the central bank.
While Babis has vowed to steer clear of the eurozone and echoes other eastern European Union leaders who accuse Brussels of attempting to limit national sovereignty by imposing rules like migrant quotas, he favours a united Europe and balks at talk of a “Czexit”.
The popularity of the 63-year-old Slovak-born chemicals, food and media tycoon appeared to be intact despite a host of scandals, including an indictment over alleged EU subsidy fraud, and suspicions that he was a Communist police agent in the former Czechoslovakia.
Supporter Jiri Milota, a 77-year-old Prague pensioner was unfazed, telling AFP that Babis had his vote “because he is accomplished and he means well”.
But independent political commentator Jiri Pehe told AFP that he could see “instability” or “maybe even chaos” in the wake of the vote as Babis’s result could be “less glamorous than expected”.
Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek, the Social Democrats leader, downplayed his party’s slumped popularity, telling AFP on Thursday that he was still hopeful to “form the government”.
Surveys showed the anti-EU Communists could win 10.5%, ahead of Okamura’s far-right SPD with 9.5% and the anti-establishment Pirates party with 8.5%.
With links to Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, Okamura’s staunchly anti-migrant and anti-Islamic rhetoric has surprisingly won him popularity in a country where there are hardly any Muslims.
“We all know what’s going on in those states where migrants mostly go and I don’t want that to happen here,” Prague postal worker Marie Matulova told AFP, saying Okamura got her vote.
Polling stations in the EU member of 10.6mn people opened at 1200 GMT yesterday and closed at 2000 GMT.
Today voting for the 200-member lower house of parliament begins at 0600 GMT and ends at 1200 GMT, with no exit polls scheduled and results expected in the evening.
