The Czech Republic on Saturday elected Petr Pavel, a senior retired NATO general and political novice, as president after near-complete results, with voters adamantly rejecting the rival candidacy of a populist billionaire and the country’s position as a staunch supporter of Ukraine have strengthened.
Mr Pavel, a former chief of staff in the Czech army and chairman of NATO’s military committee, defeated tycoon Andrej Babis, a feisty former prime minister who had tried to portray his opponent in Saturday’s runoff as a warmonger for kidnapping Czech soldiers into the conflict in Ukraine .
Mr Babis’ tactics copied those of a close former ally, Hungary’s illiberal Prime Minister Viktor Orban. who won a landside victory last April after falsely claiming that his main competitor wanted to send Hungarian troops to fight Russia in Ukraine.
But that argument failed for Mr. Babis in the Czech Republic, which has a far more diverse media outlet than Hungary, where Mr. Orban’s ruling Fidesz party and its business allies have a firm grip on television and most other sources of information.
With more than 99 percent of the votes counted, the count gave Mr. Pavel a decisive victory: 58 percent to 42 percent. Two weeks ago, Mr. Pavel and Mr. Babis were tied in the first ballot.
The Czech presidency is largely ceremonial, but incumbent Milos Zeman, barred from running by term limits, has expanded his limited powers to try to steer Czech foreign policy toward Russia and China and the central European country’s anchoring in the West to loosen.
Mr Zeman, who dropped his previously pro-Kremlin views last year, didn’t mind the Czech government’s strong support for Ukraine, which has included sending in tanks and other military equipment, but his reputation for heavy drinking and disruptive eccentricity often draws questions abroad posed about the direction of the Czech Republic.
Wipe up Mr. Zeman’s decade-long tenureMr Pavel explained the result of the election on Saturday as a “victory for the values that we share – truth, respect, humility”.
“I will ensure that these values return to Prague Castle,” he added, referring to the seat of the Czech Presidency.
Neither Mr. Pavel nor Mr. Babis share Mr. Zeman’s Eastern leanings, but their race represented a stark conflict in political styles – between reserved pragmatism and boisterous populism.
Otto Eibl, head of the political science faculty at Masaryk University in the Czech city of Brno, said Mr Pavel’s victory could be “a moment of reassurance and perhaps a step towards improving the political culture in the country”.
“But,” Mr. Eibl continued, “it will depend on how Babis deals with his defeat – whether he continues to pour fuel on the fire or acknowledges the victory” of his rival.
Speaking at his party’s headquarters in Prague on Saturday, Mr Babis conceded defeat but showed no signs of retiring from politics. He said the result showed he had strong support and could win the next general election in 2025.
Mr. Pavel, a former paratrooper widely known as “the General”, ran his campaign with the slogan “Lead with experience and calm in difficult times”. Mr Babis, who was recently acquitted of fraud allegations involving EU funds, stoked fears of the war spreading to the Czech Republic and claimed that “the general doesn’t believe in peace”.
The clash between the two men made the vote – the first in a series of key elections this year in eastern and central Europe – a major test of whether Europe’s once-rising populist tide has peaked.
Despite the Czech president’s limited formal powers, the post has high symbolic weight. This year’s election, with a first round of eight candidates, drew even more interest than usual, with more than 70 percent of voters casting their ballots in Saturday’s runoff, the highest turnout in a Czech election.
The last year showed that populism is still a force Mr. Orban’s landslide victory in Hungary, but his fortunes elsewhere were mixed. It suffered a major setback in the Czech Republic in October 2021 when Mr Babis lost his position as Prime Minister after a broad alliance of centrist and left-wing parties won a parliamentary election. Last year’s elections in Slovenia dealt another blow, with Voters are edging out Janez Jansa, a far-right admirer of Donald J. Trump and close ally of Mr Orban.
But anti-establishment populism could be gaining ground in this year’s elections in Slovakia, whose centrist government collapsed in December, paving the way for a possible return to power by Robert Fico, a bellicose former prime minister beset by corruption and others scandals has been plagued.
The crucial test, however, will be this autumn’s elections in Poland, the region’s most populous country, which has been ruled by the deeply conservative and nationalist Law and Justice party since 2015.
Barbara Petrova contributed reporting from Prague.
