Mr Babis is a centrist who contends he can manage the country as he did his business empire. He is popular with many Czechs, but others treat him with suspicion. He accumulated vast wealth from his agrochemical conglomerate, Agrofert, which produces more than a third of the country’s bread. His political rise coincided with his purchase of the newspapers. In February, a new law forced him to place his business holdings in a trust. Mr Babis insists he does not abuse his business or media ties for political gain. But he has been damaged by audio recordings, leaked earlier this month, in which he and a journalist discuss how to leak documents to discredit his political opponents.
More damaging has been the news of his tax break. In 2013 Mr Babis purchased bonds in his former company worth 1.5bn koruna ($63.5m), sneaking through a loophole just as it was about to close. The deal would bring him $2.2m in tax savings this year. Mr Babis says he will donate his gains to charity, and claims the prime minister’s aspersions about the deal are lies.
In any case, the bickering has mainly weakened Mr Sobotka and Mr Zeman. The prime minister backed down from his threat to resign, and Mr Zeman at first declined his request to fire Mr Babis. He then subjected Mr Sobotka to a humiliating dressing-down on national television. Surveys show that Czechs find Mr Zeman’s behaviour unpresidential. Mr Zeman, a former head of the Social Democrats, once had many allies in the party, but Mr Sobotka now says it may run its own candidate for president against him.
On May 24th Mr Babis stepped down, and was replaced by Ivan Pilny, an ANO deputy and the former head of Microsoft’s Czech division. But Mr Sobotka’s haphazard politicking has mostly damaged himself. Increasingly, Czechs are talking more about government dysfunction than about Mr Babis’s business dealings. He calls himself an outsider; being pushed out of government will only help him to sell that story. Owning a couple of newspapers will not hurt, either.
