Image by David Sedlecký
Newly-elected Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has been unable to find coalition partners to form a government. The opposition today forced a delay in an expected no-confidence vote in order to allow the parliamentary committee to rule on lifting parliamentary immunity for Babis prior to any further negotiations.
“It is logical to first vote on the lifting of immunity of deputies Babis and Faltynek and then return to the vote on confidence,” Zbynek Stanjura, deputy head of the biggest opposition party, the Civic Democrats, told reporters, reported Reuters.
“Babis’s ANO party won an October election by a wide margin but has only 78 seats in parliament’s 200-member lower house, and has so far been unable to find coalition partners due to a police probe into whether Babis illegally tapped European Union subsidies as a businessman a decade ago. He denies wrongdoing,” wrote Reuters.
Babis won election based on his Trumpist reputation of a fix-all businessman who could drum corruption out of the Czech government. It is possible that the opposition to his forming a government comes from political figures who do not want their corruption unearthed or their milking of government funds brought to light, similar to Trump’s plight in the United States.
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The Babis reform agenda includes infrastructure repair, digitizing the government, reforming pensions, and the reduction of corruption.
