Why Czechs May Elect a Populist Billionaire, Too

Like the U.S. in 2016, voters in the Czech Republic look set to hand power to a populist billionaire who attacks traditional parties and promises to run the state as one of his businesses. Andrej Babis is leading in opinion polls by a wide margin before Oct. 20-21 elections despite being a target of criminal investigation over alleged fraud -- he denies any wrongdoing -- as well as facing accusations of conflict of interests stemming from his chemical, food and media empire. Anti-establishment sentiment often spreads at times of economic malaise; Babis’s rise, more unusually, has come amid strong growth, record-low joblessness and robust wage increases under a coalition he’s shared with the Social Democrats.

The second-richest Czech, with a fortune estimated at $4 billion, Babis stormed the country’s politics four years ago, when his ANO party was the runner-up in legislative elections. (ANO means “yes” in Czech and is also an acronym for Action of Dissatisfied Citizens, the name of a Babis’s political movement.) ANO depicts traditional parties -- the ones that have held power since the fall of communism in 1989 -- as corrupt and incompetent. As finance minister from 2014 until his firing in May 2017, Babis got credit for overseeing an economic rally that helped cut the republic’s budget deficit - a badge of honor in a nation averse to debt and proud of its industrial heritage. One of his main initiatives forced businesses to link cash registers to the tax office via the internet, significantly improving tax compliance.