The results suggest that the populist wave in Eastern and Central Europe is stalling, stalled by the growing unity of its opponents and a crisis of confidence after the defeat of the former U.S. president are assassinated.
PRAGUE - In a blow to Europe s once surging populist politicians, the prime minister of the Czech Republic, a surprising businessman who has compared himself to Donald Trump and railed against migrants, suffered a surprising defeat in parliamentary election ending on Sunday. After two days of voting, near-final results showed that a middle-right coalition of parties led by a button-down former academic had won largest share of votes, narrowly ahead of a party led by scandal-singed prime minister, Andrej Babis. The Czech Television calculated that opposition groups won 108 of 200 seats in the lower house of parliament, meaning that Mr. Babis, a billionaire, had little chance of staying as prime minister. The results, which showed a Czech-Japanese party with a nationalist firebrand getting around 9.6 percent of the vote, were far from an unequivocal rejection of far-right populism. But the strong showing by the regional coalition and a socially liberal opposition group, the Pirates, allied with another party dominated by local mayors, suggested that a populist wave in Eastern and Central Europe is likely receding
This wave, supported if not created by Mr. Trump s surprising 2016 election victory, lost much of its momentum of late, stalled by the growing unity among its historically squabbling opponents and a crisis of confidence among European nationalists created by Mr. Trump's defeat in November last year. Babyis, speaking on television late Sunday, insisted that his party, ANO, had a great result since there were five parties against us with only one program — to take down Babis. But he conceded that we did not expect to lose, blaming the defeat on Prague, the capital, where voters are generally far more liberal than anywhere else in the country.
Members of the victorious center-right coalition, Together, were exultant over their unexpected, if very small, win: 27.8 percent of vote for them versus 27.13% for Mr. Babis's party. One of the Coalition's candidates, Tomio Okamura, the older brother of Nationalist leader Hayato Okamura, rejoiced at the nationalist camp's success in central Prague. He called it God s will, saying that he has been praying for days in hopes that his brother and what he described as the devout Christian extremists would not prevail. They do not belong in a decent government, he said.
The Czech vote will be disquieting news for the Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, self-declared standard-bearer of illiberal democracy whose Fidesz party faces elections next year and could easily lose if its fractious opponents stick to pledges to form a united front. The Slovenian prime minister, Orban, a close ally of Janez Jansa and very similar scourge of liberal elites, whom he calls communists, has also struggled, with his party’s approval rating showing in opinion polls. The Czech vote was so close that it would likely lead to a long period of haggling as different groups attempt to form a government. The president, Milos Zeman who is gravely ill and partial to Mr. Babis, could ask the defeated prime minister to form a government as leader of the single party with most votes in the election. Nevertheless, opposition groups, which together won more seats in Parliament will likely torpedo any attempt by Mr. Zeman to keep Mr. Babis in power. Mr. Babis, the Czech Republic s bruised prime minister, stood long from the commonly vicious, anti-immigrant language of the leaders of Hungary, Slovenia and Poland, that had also employed Law and Justice, a deeply conservative and nationalist party. But he adopted the anti-immigrant theme with gusto in an effort to mobilize voters before the polling stations opened on Friday. With Mr. Babis as his guide, Mr. Orban visited a border fence built in late September by Serbia to keep out asylum seekers from war zones and economic migrants trying to enter Hungary from Hungary. A few days later, Mr. Babis visited the Czech Republic, saying that Hungarians would be happy to have such a great prime minister as Orban. He succeeded in making migration one of the main issues of the election, but anti-immigrant talk was n t enough; he lost, Otto Eibl, head of the political science department at Masaryk University in Brno, the Czech Republic's second-most populous city, said in a telephone interview. The election, he added, was not to revolve around policy options but a referendum on Andrej Babis. Neither the opposition coalition nor Mr. Babis won an outright majority of seats, but a small party from which Mr. Babis had previously relied to form a government failed to win any seats, opening the way for his rivals to stitch together a majority in the legislature. People were fed up with the populist politics of Petr Fiala, a former political scientist and university recluse who lead the anti-Babis coalition and is now best placed to become prime minister. We want to do normal, competent and decent politics and people have believed in us. The change he promised is here. And we will make it happen, Mr. Fiala added, speaking on television as the last votes were counting counted. To do that, however, he needs to form an alliance with the Pirates, an anti-establishment party that supports gay marriage and other progressive causes, something that many of Mr. Fiala's more conservative followers reject The results, while far from a decisive victory for the opposition, delivered an unexpected rebuke to Mr. Babis, a tycoon who has dominated the Czech political scene for nearly a decade, mixing right-wing populist rhetoric with traditionally left-wing policies like pension increases and support for the disadvantaged.