PRAGUE: With voters upset over traditional parties and orders from Brussels, billionaire populist Andrej Babis, dubbed the “Czech Trump”, clinched victory in the Czech Republic’s election on Saturday, while eurosceptics and an anti-Islam group backed by France’s National Front made strong gains.

State election officials citing results from 99.6 per cent of polling stations said Babis’s anti-corruption and anti-euro ANO (Yes) movement was ahead with 29.7pc support (78 parliament seats) followed by the eurosceptic right-wing ODS party on 11.3pc. Turnout was at 60pc.

Far-right and far-left anti-EU parties made gains in the fragmented vote that put nine parties into the 200-seat Czech parliament with few obvious coalition allies among them, something analysts warned could trigger instability, even chaos.

A 63-year-old Slovak-born chemicals, food and media tycoon, Babis has vowed to steer clear of the eurozone and echoes other eastern EU leaders who accuse Brussels of attempting to limit national sovereignty by imposing rules like migrant quotas, he favours a united Europe and balks at talk of a “Czexit”.

Full results showed the anti-EU Communists took fifth spot winning 7.8pc support, while the Social Democrats (CSSD) who head the outgoing coalition government took a bruising, coming in sixth with 7.3pc of the vote.

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2017