Czech Mogul PM's Party Regains Favour After Covid Slip

Prague, Sept 7 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Sep, 2021 ) :Czech billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis has regained voter favour a month before a general election after a temporary slip due to poor handling of the Covid pandemic, analysts said Tuesday.

Polls suggest Babis's populist ANO (YES) movement, which leads a minority cabinet with the left-wing Social Democrats, will win the vote scheduled for October 8-9.

Leading polls for years with support reaching 30 percent, ANO temporarily slid from the top of rankings earlier this year as Covid hit hard.

"He was down at a time when another Covid wave was culminating, when people were tired with the restrictions and the government's poor handling of the situation," Otto Eibl, a political analyst from Masaryk University in Brno, told AFP.

The pandemic has claimed over 30,400 lives in the EU member country of 10.7 million, but the daily increases in new infections have since fallen to low hundreds as half of the nation is vaccinated.

Babis meanwhile promised a post-Covid recovery and massive rises in pensions and wages, despite soaring budget deficits, as he officially launched the election campaign last week.

"He has promised everything to everybody," added Eibl.

Babis, a former Communist registered as a secret Communist police agent in the 1980s, faces police charges over an EU subsidy fraud involving his Stork Nest farm.

He is also grappling with the EU's ire over his conflict of interest as a politician distributing EU subsidies and an entrepreneur receiving them as the owner of the sprawling Agrofert food, chemicals and media holding.

But his simple rhetoric resonating with his fans and populist moves keep him at the top.

"The short-term impact of the Covid restrictions has passed and he can get back to his populist policy that wins him voter favour," Tomas Lebeda, an analyst at Palacky University in the eastern city of Olomouc, told AFP.

ANO topped an August poll by the Median agency, published Tuesday, with 27-percent support among 1,058 respondents aged over 18.

The Together grouping of the right-wing Civic Democrats and TOP 09 with the centrist Christian Democrats came second with 21 percent, ahead of a grouping of the Pirate Party and the centrist STAN movement with 20.5 percent.

The poll showed the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy movement and the far-left Communists would also make it to parliament, while the Social Democrats would fail to surpass the 5.0 percent threshold for parliament entry.

The results of the poll are in line with recent polls by the Kantar CZ and STEM agencies, which also put ANO at the top ahead of the two groupings.