Prague, May 25 (CTK) – Czech ANO movement leader Andrej Babis, who was dismissed as finance minister on Wednesday, will make use of the free time he will now enjoy to meet people across the country and persuade them to vote for ANO in the October general election, daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) writes yesterday.
Babis was dismissed on Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka’s Social Democrats, CSSD) proposal due to suspected tax evasion and the misuse of the media he owned.
Babis does not agree with this and shortly before left the Finance Ministry on Wednesday, he called Sobotka a “spineless trickster,” HN writes.
ANO has led public opinion polls for a long time, yet doubts about Babis’s financial transactions and some of the steps he has taken aroused demonstrations against him in several towns, and he also noticed some criticism during his recent meetings with people in regions.
“I realise that I divide society, mainly due to the sales electronic registration (EET), which has earned me many enemies because I wanted that all pay taxes like employees,” Babis said recently, HN writes.
The EET has been pushed through on his insistence.
Babis is set to win the October general election. He starts his extensive election campaign in Kutna Hora, central Bohemia, today and his team is preparing his schedule for the weeks to come, HN writes.
It writes that Babis will tour the country like Zeman, his ally, 19 years ago. Thanks to the intensive face to face campaign Zeman, who then led the CSSD, beat the Civic Democrats (ODS), won the election and became prime minister in 1998.
Babis visited regions when he was minister, too. “On the average, he left Prague about three times a week, once on a weekday, twice at the weekend. Now, there will be substantially more visits. Mr Babis will go to ‘every’ village to explain what has happened,” ANO spokeswoman Lucie Kubovicova told HN.
On his trips, Babis promises various investments and also meets people who write to him angry mails or posts on social networks, HN writes, but it adds that not all want to meet him.
HN writes that during his visit to Brno, he said he will do the most for the city to have a new winter stadium. In Kvasiny, east Bohemia, he said he was displeased by that the municipality has perhaps the ugliest self-rule authority’s seat and no good roofed sports facility, which should change.
Babis invited Kvasiny’s seniors to his Capi hnizdo (Stork Nest) recreation and congress centre in central Bohemia “to see for themselves that everything is in order there,” HN writes.
It adds that he extended the same invitation to secondary-school students in the nearby Rychnov nad Kneznou.
The Capi hnizdo project has been investigated over abuse of EU subsidies both in the Czech Republic and by the EU OLAF anti-corruption and anti-fraud body.
The CSSD, which trails ANO by a double-digit difference in public opinion polls, is not preparing any more intensive face-to-face campaign in reaction to the change of ANO’s election campaign, HN writes.
“The classical face-to-face campaign will start during the summer,” HN quotes the CSSD’S election manager Jan Birke as saying.
Until then, Sobotka will continue meeting people as he was doing as yet, Birke added.
