Does Andrej Babis have bigger political ambitions?
The Czech Republic’s second richest man buys important newspapers
By B.C. | PRAGUE
ANDREJ BABIS has a lot of people worried. As the Czech Republic’s second richest man, the billionaire’s recent purchase of one of the country’s leading media companies combined with stated political ambitions some warn that a Czech Silvio Berlusconi may be in the making.
Earlier this month, Mr Babíš finalised the purchase of MAFRA, a publishing house that owns two of the country’s main opinion-making daily newspapers, Lidové noviny and Mladá fronta Dnes. One of Lidové noviny’s best-known editors promptly resigned. The rest of the Czech press has reacted with alarm to the takeover. One magazine used a play on words on its cover to as: Yesterday Dnes! What tomorrow? (The word Dnes is reference to the newspaper’s title, but also literally translates as today.) “It’s unclear what his intentions are,” said Lubomír Kopeček, a political science professor at Masaryk University in Brno.
Mr Babíš is founder of the massive Agrofert group, which consists of some 200 different firms and leases the bulk of the Czech Republic’s agricultural land. The company is historically focused on the chemical, farming and food production sectors and purchased a major German baking company earlier this year. While Mr Babíš has stopped short of registering it as an official political party, he formed his own “political movement” last year. For the moment, the only stated position is that it is against corruption.
As in many places, the Czech rich and powerful have long owned stakes in media. The former foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, once owned a chunk of Respekt, a weekly magazine. A billionaire coal magnate, Zdeněk Bakala, owns another of the country’s major publishers, Ekonomia, the present-day owner of Respekt and a daily, Hospodářské noviny. But Mr Babíš has given people reason for concern as he has owned a smaller circulation daily, 5plus2, for a number of years. Kind references to Mr Babíš, his company and its subsidiaries are a regular feature.
Few believe Mr Babíš plans to convert his two new newspapers into direct propaganda arms for his political ambitions, but he hardly needs to. As one parliamentary insider noted, “all he needs to do is discredit the establishment parties.” At the moment there is plenty of ill repute to go around. Continued tumult on the Czech political scene, including the recent resignation of the prime minister amid a spying and corruption scandal and the appointment of a highly controversial caretaker government continues to leave a bad taste on voters’ already soured palates.
With this approach Mr Babíš would revisit the tactics of other newly formed populist parties that have had success in recent Czech elections. Given the prevailing mood, there is little reason to doubt such parties can be successful again. Mr Babíš is unlikely to be the only one seeking to capitalise on an electorate dissatisfied with its governing class. Tomio Okamura, a Japanese-Czech businessman whose was disqualified from the presidential election earlier this year on technicalities, is building a political base his native Moravia, in the east of the country, and gaining traction. As Mr Kopeček noted, both men seek to tap that time-tested “combination of populism and dissatisfaction with the establishment”.
Mr Babíš can marshal virtually unlimited resources to his cause. He has already hired American public relations firm, though it remains unclear whether Mr Babíš would front his own electoral party or return to another standard from the Czech political playbook: drafting an amicable pseudo-celebrity to front the cause while pulling the strings from behind. For now, Mr Babíš may be betting on media to be his vehicle to power, but if a recent bumbling performance on a television talk show and the backlash that his purchase of MAFRA has produced is any indication, media may yet prove his undoing.
