Prague, June 1 (CTK) – The ANO movement will not form a government together with the Communists (KSCM) and the TOP 09 party after the Czech autumn general election, its leader Andrej Babis said in an interview with CTK on Wednesday.
He reacted to TOP 09 chairman Miroslav Kalousek’s statement that TOP 09 would ally with neither ANO nor the KSCM after the October elections.
Babis said he did not want to anticipate how the government-forming negotiations between parties would develop after the elections.
He said he knows that the other parties may try to form a coalition government without ANO even if ANO wins the elections.
A similar situation happened in some Czech regions after the regional elections last autumn ANO ended up in opposition, although it won.
“There is the risk that they will all stand against us,” said Babis, who is considered the second richest businessman in the country.
Babis owns the giant Agrofert holding, which he transferred to trust funds to comply with a new conflict of interest law, dubbed Lex Babis, earlier this year.
In May, the Chamber of Deputies issued a resolution that Babis openly lied and abused his media in order to discredit his political rivals. Politicians from various parties labelled him a threat to Czech parliamentary democracy. PM Bohuslav Sobotka (Social Democrats, CSSD) demanded that Babis leave the posts of finance minister and deputy prime minister last week.
ANO is the most popular party in the country and it has a two-digit lead over the runner-up CSSD, but it is not supported by a majority of voters, opinion polls indicated.
Babis, who founded ANO in 2012, said the political veterans who lead the CSSD, TOP 09 and the Civic Democrats (ODS) were responsible for many of the bad things in the country.
He said the talks about a future government would depend on who would lead the negotiations on behalf of individual parties.
Some influential CSSD politicians and Christian Democrat (KDU-CSL) regional governor Jiri Cunek seem ready to ally with ANO, while Sobotka and KDU-CSL leader Pavel Belobradek strongly criticise Babis.
Babis said the alliance of the KDU-CSL and Mayors and Independents (STAN) had a good programme and ANO’s possible cooperation with the KDU/STAN alliance would depend on the negotiators.
He said he does not expect ANO to have a problem with finding personalities to head ministries in case of its election victory.
“This won’t be a problem. In ANO, one doesn’t have to sit for 22 years to become minister or prime minister. We did not divide ministerial posts among our regional branches, unlike the CSSD. We want to have experts in the government,” Babis said, criticising the mainstream parties.
He said he would like the cabinet to be a good team. He added that the CSSD and the KDU-CSL made deals in the current government, while ANO remained alone in it.
ANO is likely to spend 90 million crowns on the election campaign, which is the cap imposed on the spending, he said.
Babis said the campaign would be similar to the previous ANO campaigns. It is to culminate in September and focus on taxes, investments and the functioning of the state, he said.
Babis said ANO’s election campaign is coordinated by M&M Reality owner Petr Morcinek.
