Jan Urban: This is how the Balkan wars started, Babiš is consciously subverting Czech society and the state

Naturally, there’s a lot more to know. Babiš began his political career with anti-corruption rhetoric, which was believable at the time, by criticizing the sometimes hidden/sometimes open power cartel between the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and the Czech Social Democratic Party (ČSSD). which had led Czech politics into a dead-end street.

The fact that he himself had been an integral part of that cartel for quite some time and a mover and shaker in it (if not yet the boss) is something he understandably never said. Let’s recall the year 2010, though, when Czech President Václav Klaus attempted, for purely ideological reasons, to confound Babiš’s billion-crown investment into the processing of rapeseed oil.

Babiš could not allow the loss of his anticipated billions in profit. To this day the question is whether he would have entered politics at all if that conflict hadn’t happened.

Back then, Andrej Babiš managed in record time to lobby in Parliament for the President’s veto of his investment to be overturned – an absolutely unique vote cast on the very last day before the next elections. He was surprised to see how easy it is to manipulate the Czech media and politicians.

The illusion of a hardscrabble politician

Babiš also intelligently learned from the failure of the new political party TOP 09, which before him had tried to win over that same segment of at least 30 % of the electorate who are dissatisfied, but under pressure from the ambitious Miroslav Kalousek, TOP 09 forgot about its voters too soon and was satisfied dealing with its quickly-assumed positions in the Government and in Parliament. The anti-corruption subject was up for grabs and Babiš pounced.

During the next 13 years, Babiš managed to create a mixture of innovative political marketing based on his direct media ownership and his personal mobilization of his followers. He evoked the image among the dissatisfied part of the electorate that he is a hardworking “people’s” politician, first in his role as Finance Minister and ultimately as Prime Minister.

However, as problems continued to grow, including the corruption that he loved harping on, the fragility of his influence and his support began to show, stemming above all from his inability to present a positive political vision. Up until then it had been enough for him to attack any “enemy” or opponent.

Once in power, it suddenly seemed that without an “enemy”, Babiš had nothing left to say. In his Association of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) movement, which is a typical “one-man party”, nobody has been found to spark a discussion about a different strategy at this moment.

ANO members who especially disagreed with corruption and with the “Agrofertization” of the movement quietly left. They might have been shocked, for example, by the findings of the anti-corruption association Kverulant, according to which “from October 2016 to October 2020, Regional Authorities with governors elected for the ANO movement concluded three times as many contracts with firms belonging to the premier’s former holding as in regions led by governors from other parties”.

Those who remained in ANO relied on their boss’s habitually confrontational style. Long before the parliamentary elections in 2021, Babiš was consciously polarizing the political scene, making it a priori impossible for there to be any compromise with the other political parties.

Instead of trying to influence the other parties’ programs or reach a compromise, he began to seek support from more and more radical and openly anti-system groups. The end result, logically, is Foldyna as a symbol of Babiš’s days to come.

We’ll scare you with war

Extremists of all shades will just keep glomming on to Babiš now. If he doesn’t win, his return to a more civil, conciliatory politics will happen only with great difficulty.

He has apparently irreversibly lost the trust of the political center, which customarily balances out the more extreme positions. All he has left is an aggressive frontal assault.

In a democratic society, a certain borderline of respectability has to exist beyond which a politician who feels solidarity and co-responsibility with his fellow human beings will not cross. I’ve been in several wars and I know exactly what the fear of violence and of one’s life being endangered does to people.

This is how the Balkan wars of the 1990s broke out. Politicians began playing with the fear of war to get elected and “fought” the internal “enemy” who allegedly wanted war.

Gradually this resulted in four different conflicts; never-ending, perpetual suffering; hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of refugees. Those societies remained traumatized for decades.

Babiš has produced dozens of billboards scaring people with the possibility of war should his opponent, Petr Pavel, win, and once the first round of voting was over, they were up the next day. The lowness of the level to which he will stoop was shown by his undignified press conference after the first round results were announced, which was full of distasteful remarks and flat-out lies.

The majority of ANO functionaries and legislators are as respectful of their chair as a herd of sheep (honor to the exceptions) and follow him without bothering to make any disclaimers. This is not a democratic politics, but the subversion of both society and the state.

Babiš should never have attempted this run for president. His candidacy is the biggest mistake he’s made and we hope it will be the beginning of his end.

It should be enough for his opponent Petr Pavel, who is economical, not hysterical, and unaffiliated with any political party, to ignore the personal attacks against him by a nervous, tired Babiš. Unlike Babiš. Pavel has understood that most of the electorate in the Czech Republic wants their president to be a discreet arbiter and mediator of negotiations between all political entities, not an argumentative and deceitful know-it-all and slanderer.