Andrej Babis’s Scorched-Earth Bid for the Czech Presidency

PRAGUE—Just three days before Czech voters head to the polls to elect their next president, Andrej Babis called a last-minute press conference to decry the level of political polarization in the country. Babis—the populist billionaire, former prime minister, and one of two contenders for the presidency—announced he wouldn’t be appearing at any further campaign events because of recent death threats against him and his family. “Let’s stop the hate, the aggression,” he said.

It would have been a typical, statesmanlike appeal for unity—if Babis himself hadn’t been the source of most of the intense attacks in the campaign. As soon as the votes were counted in the election’s first round this month, Babis went on the offensive against his opponent, retired general and NATO official Petr Pavel. Since then, struggling in the polls, he has compared Pavel to Russian President Vladimir Putin, attacked him for serving as a soldier in the Czech army during communist times, and based his campaign portraying Pavel as intent on sending Czech soldiers to war. He also seemingly questioned his commitment to NATO’s mutual defense commitments, although he later walked back his comments.

Pavel, meanwhile—who has a comfortable lead over Babis in recent polls—has run as the steady choice in turbulent times. Responding to Babis’s announcement on Tuesday, Pavel called Babis the problem and said he needs to back down from his misleading claims about Pavel and the war. “As a result of your campaign, the conflict in society has reached a critical level, and we must reduce it,” he said. The final round of voting will take place Friday and Saturday.

PRAGUE—Just three days before Czech voters head to the polls to elect their next president, Andrej Babis called a last-minute press conference to decry the level of political polarization in the country. Babis—the populist billionaire, former prime minister, and one of two contenders for the presidency—announced he wouldn’t be appearing at any further campaign events because of recent death threats against him and his family. “Let’s stop the hate, the aggression,” he said.

It would have been a typical, statesmanlike appeal for unity—if Babis himself hadn’t been the source of most of the intense attacks in the campaign. As soon as the votes were counted in the election’s first round this month, Babis went on the offensive against his opponent, retired general and NATO official Petr Pavel. Since then, struggling in the polls, he has compared Pavel to Russian President Vladimir Putin, attacked him for serving as a soldier in the Czech army during communist times, and based his campaign portraying Pavel as intent on sending Czech soldiers to war. He also seemingly questioned his commitment to NATO’s mutual defense commitments, although he later walked back his comments.

Pavel, meanwhile—who has a comfortable lead over Babis in recent polls—has run as the steady choice in turbulent times. Responding to Babis’s announcement on Tuesday, Pavel called Babis the problem and said he needs to back down from his misleading claims about Pavel and the war. “As a result of your campaign, the conflict in society has reached a critical level, and we must reduce it,” he said. The final round of voting will take place Friday and Saturday.

Although the Czech presidency has limited powers, it plays a significant symbolic role and helps set the tone for public debate in the country—an important job as Europe grapples with Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as rising inflation and energy prices. As a result, the rhetorical contrast between Babis, who has called for a peace summit with Russia, and Pavel, a former NATO official, represents a potential turning point for the Central European country.

“In Czech public opinion, the figure of the president is in a separate league,” said Jan Herzmann, a political analyst. “The symbolic role is really very important in the Czech state of mind.”

For Babis, who was ousted as prime minister in 2021 after his party’s performance in that year’s parliamentary elections, the presidency would be a path back into public office. And the campaign has helped him lay the groundwork for his anti-establishment ANO (“YES”) party in the next parliamentary election, scheduled for 2025. The billionaire has toned up his populist rhetoric, particularly in the wake of rising inflation and this fall’s large protests over increased energy prices in Prague, saying he’s the candidate that understands the problems of regular voters. 

“He’s a sort of shape-shifter,” said Sean Hanley, a professor at the University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies. “His basic appeal is economic, paternalistic, and sort of socially conservative in a diffuse way: ‘I understand ordinary people. I understand people out in the provinces. I understand people on low incomes. My concerns are your concerns.’”

But Babis’s chances of victory look slim. Polling in the race shows Pavel with a sizable lead: An Ipsos survey published this week put Pavel’s support at around 59 percent, compared with around 41 percent for Babis. Other surveys conducted during the second round have found similar margins.

That partly explains why, after a relatively calm first-round campaign, Babis came out swinging in the second round. As a known entity in Czech politics, Babis will struggle to grow his electorate too far beyond the 35 percent he won in the first round. Pavel, by contrast, has much more potential to pick up many of the votes of his former first-round opponents. As a result, Babis’s scorched-earth tactics are intended not just to shore up support among his own supporters but to try to encourage other voters to stay home.

“The bigger the turnout, the lower the probability of Mr. Babis winning,” said Petra Guasti, a political scientist at Charles University in Prague. “And that’s why his strategy is demobilization. … I think [for him] it’s victory at all costs.”

The first-round ballots had barely been counted when Babis, speaking at a post-election press conference, set the tone for the rest of the campaign when he compared Pavel to Putin. “Do you know who else is an intelligence officer at the head of state? Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin was dropped off and deployed as a KGB agent in the 1980s in Berlin,” he said. (It wasn’t in Berlin.) “This is what Mr. Pavel was prepared for, to be planted in the rear of the enemy, to get people there to cooperate.” (Pavel was in regular Czech army, not Czech intelligence.)

It didn’t stop there. In the days that followed, Babis repeatedly asserted that Pavel and his allies would send Czech citizens into war. Around the country, billboards with Babis’s new slogans—“I will not drag Czechia into a war” and “I am a diplomat. Not a soldier”—went up. Pavel, for his part, has called Babis’s claims outlandish, saying he is disrespecting Czech soldiers—and misrepresenting the truth—by even suggesting it.

“Before the first round, [Babis] was trying to play the good uncle: He’d become very conciliatory,” said Jiri Pehe, a political analyst and former adviser to former Czech President Vaclav Havel. “After the first round, he completely lost that. The mask was removed—and there was the old Andrej Babis.”

His second-round comments have gone beyond just attacking Pavel: He’s also caused waves internationally by seemingly questioning NATO’s mutual defense commitments. Asked during a televised debate whether he would send troops to fellow NATO countries like Poland or the Baltic states in the event that they were attacked, Babis replied, “Definitely not.” “I want peace, I don’t want war,” he said. “And in no case would I send our children and the children of our women to war.”

The next morning, the candidate took to Twitter to walk back his statement. He said his comments had been distorted and that he had “never questioned NATO’s collective defense” but merely “wouldn’t want to imagine a third world war happening.”

Babis’s arguments have been aided by a robust disinformation scene. The week before election day, for example, some voters received text messages telling them they purportedly needed to sign up for a military draft. And on Thursday, the day before the vote, a fake website meant to mimic Pavel’s official campaign website announced the candidate had died—a claim Pavel quickly called outlandish: “Yes, I’m alive,” he wrote on Twitter. “I never thought I would have to write this.” Babis, in the wake of his last-minute call for civility, replied to Pavel’s post saying, “I’m sorry that someone would stoop to something like this.”

Babis’s strategy of depressing turnout doesn’t seem to be working: This weekend’s vote could see a record number of people show up to the polls. In the first round, more than 68 percent of the electorate turned out to vote, and a Czech Television poll released last weekend found turnout could hit an unprecedented 84 percent in the second round.

Still, even if he looks unlikely to win this weekend, Babis’s populist message and appeal to the so-called common people has resonated among certain parts of the electorate, particularly lower-income voters and those outside major cities. As Czech citizens—like many across Europe—grapple with the economic consequences of the war, Babis is far from the only politician who will seek to capitalize on economic insecurities.

“There is still this emotional undercurrent somewhere deep in the minds of the people, who are afraid because they can see that the economic situation is worsening,” said Sarah Komasova, an analyst at Charles University’s STEM research institute in Prague. “And if people have these concerns, they are more likely to listen to this emotionally laden argumentation.”