Voters in the Czech Republic go to the polls this week to elect a new president in a contest that could set the country on a renewed path of populism or bring to office a national unifier promising to heal divisions opened up by the rumbustious incumbent, Miloš Zeman.
Eight candidates are vying to succeed the 78-year-old, who is constitutionally bound to step down after two successive five-year terms. Voting will be spread over Friday and Saturday and is almost certain to be followed by a second-round runoff in a fortnight’s time.
At stake is the right to a venerated office, based in Prague’s imperious castle, that holds a significant moral and symbolic authority critics say Zeman has abused by voicing support for Vladimir Putin (recanted since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), agitating for closer ties with China and belittling the efforts of the Czech intelligence services.
Despite the extended field, the poll has boiled down to a fierce tussle between three frontrunners, vying for a place in a head-to-head second round on 27 and 28 January.
Andrej Babiš, a former prime minister, Petr Pavel, a retired general and former army chief of staff, and Danuše Nerudová, an academic economist and the only female candidate, have all been recording support at about the mid-20s level in recent surveys.
The long-running legal travails of Babiš have overshadowed the election. The billionaire tycoon received a potential electoral boost this week when a court in Prague acquitted him of fraud charges that arose from accusations he improperly obtained EU small business funds for a hotel and conference that was part of his business empire.
The verdict could give Babiš an added push to qualify for the runoff ballot.
Once there, pollsters predict, he is likely to lose to either Pavel or Nerudová, whose liberal-minded supporters are expected to coalesce against a candidate whose tenure as prime minister provoked the country’s biggest mass protests since the fall of communism in 1989, and who is thought incapable of picking up many votes outside his populist ANO party’s electoral base.
Babiš, 68, only declared his candidacy in late October after months of hedging his bets and touring the country in a camper van in an unofficial campaign during which he poured scorn on the estimated 400,000 Ukrainian refugees in the Czech Republic and expressed scepticism about western military aid for Ukraine.
That stance puts him at odds with Pavel, 61, a former military chair of Nato who is a staunch advocate of the Czech Republic’s place in the western alliance and active support for Ukraine.
Yet both men are haunted by a shared past in the communist establishment of the former Czechoslovakia.
Slovak-born Babiš was unmasked years ago as a former agent for the ŠtB, the communist-era secret police, a past role he disputes despite it having been confirmed by a court in Slovakia.
Pavel, meanwhile, joined the then ruling communist party in 1985, two years later penning a biography justifying the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and enrolling in a three-year course overseen by the regime’s military intelligence unit. He says he condemns the invasion and only joined the party because he wanted to follow a military career.
Nerudová, who at 44 is the field’s youngest candidate, has sought to exploit the other two frontrunners’ shadowy pasts, casting herself as “the future” and her opponents as political relics who are adrift from younger generations that grew up in a time of democracy and freedom. “At the moment, there is very low motivation among young people to participate because the politicians from this era do not understand and do not address the problems of the young generation,” she told the Guardian.
Nerudová has accused Pavel of sexism after he suggested he could appoint her to his presidential administration as an accounting expert because of her background as a specialist in tax policy. He has dismissed the allegation.
Yet Nerudová’s poll surge has slowed after her candidacy drew scrutiny from Czech media over an allegedly fraudulent scheme in which foreign students were reportedly awarded PhDs in exchange for payment after minimal study at Mendel University in Brno, the Czech Republic’s second city, while she was rector. Nerudová says she was unaware of the alleged practice at the time.
Critics also claim she would face conflicts of interest if she was president because her husband is a partner in the Czech Republic’s biggest law firm, representing corporate clients. The president has appointment powers over senior judges and judicial figures, including to the country’s highest court.
Bohumil Kartous, a Czech political activist and commentator who knows both Pavel and Nerudová, said the former general’s Soviet-era past paradoxically made him attractive to voters. “His previous Communist party membership appeals to older people because they would think, we all had hard lives and we met it together and therefore he knows more than Danuše Nerudová,” Kartous said. “Older voters will be crucial to the final result.”
