Prague, June 12 (CTK) – Billionaire and businessman Andrej Babis, Czech finance minister and ANO movement leader, 60, has learnt the art of politics and of diverting attention from substantial matters, while gradually changing the country, David Klimes writes in daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) Friday.
Babis, owner of Agrofert Holding that also includes some media, entered top-level politics in 2013, coining the idea of managing the state as a firm. He is the most popular politician in the country and ANO has been leading public opinion polls, pushing the winner of the 2013 general election, the Social Democrats (CSSD), to second position.
Klimes writes that Babis’s statements and conflicts of interest are endlessly discussed in public, while he is more and more successful in installing his own people in key positions, pushing through bills influencing the country for decades to come and changing the operation of the Finance Ministry.
Babis’s big success is the pushing through of the bill on electronic registration of sales. The government has approved the draft legislation of which most ministers possibly believe that it is bad or minimally badly written, Klimes writes.
The bill that will fundamentally change business in the country does not clearly state any details. Babis only repeats that no untaxed income, even the lowest one, can be tolerated, Klimes writes.
Babis claims that it will suffice to add accompanying decrees to the law, Klimes writes.
He writes that the marginal matters or by-the-way mentioned ideas with which Babis diverts attention from substantial themes include his saying that it would be the best to abolish the regional division of the country.
Klimes writes that Babis’s other favourite themes include the constant relativising of the government coalition agreement and the tabling of proposals of which he knows that the CSSD will not approve. One of them is his desire to privatise state and semi-state firms, Klimes writes.
He writes that in many European countries, the Finance Ministry that mainly takes care of the budget is separated from the economy ministry that is responsible for economic development.
In the Czech Republic, all this is done by one office only and many previous finance ministers limited themselves to the exhausting effort to harness the budgetary wishes of their colleagues and to draft a budget for the next year, Klimes writes.
However, this is not enough for Babis. He has evidently started to assign specific tasks to the tax administration. Last year, for instance, he started an action against tax non-payers in Prague and seized VAT worth 10 billion crowns from hundreds of firms. He had to return a major part of the amount later. None of his predecessors dared to do this, Klimes writes.
Babis has also come to understand how to behave in the government. A man who only commanded his firm in the past quarter-century has found out how to satisfy his coalition partners and push through his plans, Klimes writes.
To attain them, he has evidently sacrificed budgetary discipline. He has repeatedly played the game in which he first opposed his government colleagues’ budget claims, but eventually he accepted them in exchange for a concession on their part, Klimes writes.
He writes that Babis presents himself as a reformer and a debts tamer, but he mainly considers the budget an instrument with which to satisfy his government coalition partners and enlist their agreement with fundamental changes to the operation of the state.
Last year’s budget ended in a deficit of 77.8 billion crowns, but this year, when the economy is growing at a record rate, the deficit is projected at 100 billion. When Babis says he wants to bring the budget down to 70 billion in 2016, he is actually only returning it to where it was last year, Klimes writes.
After the one and a half years spent in office, Babis has definitively learnt the rules of politics. After agriculture, chemical industry, food production and media, politics has become another branch in which he has succeeded with the “spade theory” in which he believes, Klimes writes.
He writes that the theory means that he who got hold of a spade on the sandpit at the age of three years, will be a dominant leader for the rest of life.
No one can deny that after his initial uncertainty, Babis is holding the spade in political life more and more firmly, Klimes writes.
