Prague, Feb 25 (CTK) – Czech Deputy PM and ANO chairman Andrej Babis believes that the Czech Republic should follow foreign examples of state administration, he says in an interview in Saturday’s issue of Denik daily, adding that he would like the Czech Republic to have German parliamentary democracy, the U.S. majority system and the Swiss direct democracy.
Babis said it surprised him that former [first post-communist] president Vaclav Havel [in office from 1989 to 2003] did not introduce the presidential system in the Czech Republic.
“I enjoy the majority system in the USA. When President [Donald] Trump took up the post, he immediately went to his office and started making decisions. He had no coalition meetings or meetings of various commissions and councils,” Babis said.
In Switzerland, he would seek an inspiration in its functional system of referenda, and in Germany in the Bundestag’s effective order of procedure, he said.
According to him, the Czech Chamber of Deputies’ order of procedure should change.
“I can see no reason for the lawmakers to try and grill me over the Stork Nest ten times, instead of letting me work,” Babis said, alluding to last year’s uproar over what the critics called suspicious drawing of EU subsidies by Babis’s Stork Nest farm near Prague.
Babis said the Czech Senate, the upper house of parliament, should change as well.
If less than 30 percent of eligible voters turned up in the polling stations during a Senate election, the post of senator in the given ward should be abolished, he suggested.
Babis would also lower the number of ministries and funds, he said.
Politicians should have had a similar vision of the country’s development in the early 1990s already, after the fall of the communist regime, he continued.
“They could have called the Swiss, who would have made a state based on direct democracy for them,” Babis told Denik.
He also mentioned the 14th century under the rule of Charles IV, king of Bohemia and Holy Roman emperor from the Luxembourg dynasty, who, Babis said, made decisions promptly.
He achieved so much in his life, and the Czechs are lucky to have had that king, Babis said.
“I hope that I, too, will leave some achievements behind. However, most politicians will leave nothing but prattle behind,” Babis told the paper.
