Bratislava, Feb 9 (CTK) – Andrej Babis, the Slovak-born Czech Finance Minister and ANO movement leader, is about to conquer the Czech state, Slovak daily Dennik N writes yesterday, adding that foxes have always controlled Czech policy but a dreadful lion is approaching this time.
It alludes to ANO’s position of a hot favourite of the Czech general election due in October.
“It is an anthropological mystery. The Czechs did away with communism far more resolutely than the Slovaks, but they are going to massively support a former communist. They incline to egalitarianism, but they will support a billionaire. They pride in their ethnically almost clean state, but they will cast their ballots for a Slovak man whose Czech is a mockery of their worshipped mother tongue,” Dennik N writes, referring to Babis.
It says there are more causes of Babis’s amazing success. One of them is his aggressiveness of a predator that caught the Czech political culture unprepared.
Czech political parties have tried to stop Babis’s conquest of the state by passing a law to force him to give up the ownership of his mammoth Agrofert Holding, the paper continues.
“Another barrier has been put up by the media which Babis does not own and which he therefore considers his archenemy,” it writes.
Public “Czech Television (CT) has successfully parried big pressures so far, but Babis might break its resistance, if he became prime minister. CT is one of the few institutions of whose influence on voters he is really afraid,” Dennik N writes.
It mentions the case of Babis’s untaxed incomes from Agrofert bonds which he purchased a couple of years ago, as well as Babis’s current argument that the deal was legal at the time.
“The charming aspect of the affair is that Babis was entering politics [in the early 2010s] with a public promise to steer the state like a business company of his own, to the benefit of citizens. However, it is obvious that the main goal of his Agrofert bonds operation was his private profit reached to the detriment of the company as well as the state,” Dennik N writes.
It says “Babis is a dictator by nature, because he does not recognise the democratic principle of competition. He considers his business and political rivals an enemy who must be eliminated,” the paper says.
The damage caused by Babis so far is hard to enumerate. “He has liquidated two pillars of the Czech press, Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) and Lidove noviny (LN) newspapers,” it adds.
In 2013, Babis bought the Mafra media group that issues the two national dailies.
Dennik N compares Babis to a predator who believes in being the only one who can help Czech society. He spreads this belief in his own mission with a charm of a naive altruist faced with corrupt politicians who are trying hard to undermine his feet.
