An interview with the billionaire turned politician
By B.C. | PRAGUE
ANDREJ BABIS takes most visitors to the back room of a Prague restaurant near the headquarters of the company he founded. Just weeks after his party called ANO (Czech for Yes) surpassed expectations by finishing a close second in the Czech general election, the billionaire businessman has returned to the campaign trail, hosting rallies and meetings. His “Still With You” tour will run through December 5th.
“For the first time some politician came back to the voters one month after the election,” says Mr Babiš (pictured). “Before, they didn’t come back for four years because they had no interest.”
But it is more than Mr Babiš’s marketing acumen that has many in the Czech political establishment concerned. An analysis of ANO supporters in the wake of the October 25th and 26th election found they come from varied socio-economic groups: rich and poor, rural and urban, men and women. Within two weeks of the vote, 7,000 more had tried to register as party members. ANO is now beginning to look as if it has staying power. It seems set to join a coalition government with the Social Democrats and the smaller Christian Democrats. ANO’s loose pro-business, anti-establishment message resonated with a pessimistic public frustrated by decades of political corruption.
Mr Babiš passionately contends that an old boy network of political parties, media and the like sought to badmouth him and his party in the run up to election. It was widely alleged that Mr Babiš worked for the StB, the detested Communist-era secret police, during the 1980s, which is backed by archived files. Though he admits to being one-time member of the Communist Party, Mr Babiš strongly denies ever colluding with the StB and refers to an interrogation in 1980 related to a Czechoslovak-Syrian commodities deal while hypothesising on how his name ended up in the StB archives. Mr Babiš has taken the Slovak research institute that unearthed the documents to court (he was born in what is now Slovakia and still speaks Czech with a thick Slovak accent). He notes that he first brought a lawsuit disputing the validity of the documents in January 2012, a full 22 months before the election. The glacial pace of the Slovak judiciary means the case is unlikely to be resolved soon.
“All these old stories about the secret service are bullshit,” says Mr Babiš. “Should I be out of society because I am on some list? The regime was following capable people and I was capable. I never cooperated.” He has thus far declined to submit to an examination known as lustration, whereby candidates for high office are screened for past ties to the communist regime. Those implicated at a sufficiently high level are banned from holding public office. “If I am on some list, of course I will have a problem,” says Mr Babiš by way of explaining why has thus far demurred from the screening process. “According to our lawyers, I don’t need this.”
If the political establishment sought to defame Mr Babiš, it is clear that animus runs both ways. Asked what he thinks about Miloš Zeman, the current president, Mr Babiš is hesitant to criticise what many have seen as the president’s destabilising interventions into parliamentary politics this year. But did he vote for Mr Zeman in the presidential election earlier this year? “No,” he says. “I voted for [former foreign minister Karel] Schwarzenberg, but not because I support Mr Schwarzenberg. I voted because there is clear evidence about Zeman and [former President Václav] Klaus. For me, Klaus is the person who has had the biggest negative impact on this country since the revolution.”
Blunt talk like this endears Mr Babiš and ANO to voters. “The mafia was managing this country, along with lobbyists and crooks,” he states. A self-confessed political “amateur”, Mr Babiš advocates managing the state in a much in the way he manages his sprawling business interests. Amid calls for longer term economic planning and centralised decision making on distributing European Union grants, it is hard to see where the reality of election cycles and shifting political winds fit in. “There is a difference, but you have to understand the logic when I say govern the state like a business,” he says. “I am governing a company in favour of the company and shareholders. Politicians are governing the state in their favour.”
In a country of just ten million people, misgivings about conflictd of interest emerge as the country’s second richest man attains political power. Some allege that Agrofert, Mr Babiš’s agricultural, food processing and chemical conglomerate, could unduly influence state policy. One scenario has the state taking an increasingly adversarial position in what is a perpetual battle between the Czech Republic and Poland over the trade of food products. Mr Babiš purchased the publisher of two leading daily newspapers earlier this year, leading to comparisons with Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian media tycoon. “I want really to prove that I don’t want to have any influence on the media,” he claims.
Mr Babiš is resolute that his decision to start ANO is about his own frustration with the direction of the country. New as he may be to the politics game, he speaks like he is in it for the long haul. “I don’t need to live here. I could be a citizen of Monaco. I am risking my personal life, company, everything and I am constantly attacked by journalists saying, ‘agent, agent, agent,’” says Mr Babiš. “I was working for two years, 20 hours a day before the election. I met 30,000 people. I don’t need to fill my ego. My ego is really full.”
