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Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He tweets at @DaliborRohac.

In an era where it’s become customary to see democracy on the ballot in every election, the Czech Republic’s presidential race provides a refreshing counterexample.

It’s not that the office of the president is politically insignificant. Despite being a largely ceremonial presidency, the Czech head of state actually enjoys substantial leeway when it comes to foreign policy and informal influence.

However, in a fortnight, firebrand billionaire and former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš will face Petr Pavel, a retired army general and former chair of the NATO Military Committee, in the run-off. And even though the Czechs are polarized in a manner now very familiar to Western observers — with the two leading candidates neck and neck after this past weekend’s first round — this common cleavage between populism and technocracy, the “somewheres” and the “anywheres,” or the rural blue-collar and the highly educated urban electorates is an exceedingly inoffensive, sanitized version of that conflict.

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To be sure, there’s no doubt that Pavel’s presidency would be a dignified and competently executed affair — perhaps even offering a continuation of the values-based outlook associated with the leadership of Václav Havel in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Still, the alternative is making elite circles across Europe nervous — but it shouldn’t.

It would take a wild imagination to believe that the strength of Czech political institutions or that the health of the country’s democracy somehow hinges on the outcome of this election.

Babiš already served a full term as prime minister of the Czech Republic. And while he’s frequently compared to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán or the leader of Poland’s Law and Justice party Jarosław Kaczyński, during his time in office, the country didn’t see similar efforts at incumbent entrenchment.

Having grown up in Slovakia, and sporting a heavy Slovak accent, Babiš would make an odd avatar for Czech ethnonationalism — if such a thing even exists. In fact, his brand of populism is of a managerialist variety, as is his traditional campaign promise: to manage the state like a firm.

To be sure, the latter idea is troubling too, as is the fact that Babiš never properly divested from his assets during his time in politics. His conglomerate, Agrofert, remained the largest private-sector employer in the Czech Republic throughout his premiership — encompassing a multitude of businesses in fields such as agriculture, fertilizer and food-processing — and remained on the receiving end of billions from the EU budget.

Babiš was also under criminal investigation for years for supposed subsidy fraud involving the building of his signature countryside resort, the Stork’s Nest. A court cleared him of all the charges just four days before the election’s first round.

Yet, whatever the merits of the case — and a European Union audit did indeed flag the Stork’s Nest subsidy as being in breach of relevant rules — it’s telling that nobody in the Czech Republic’s polarized political environment is contesting the court’s decision as illegitimate or politicized.

And what of the former prime minister’s attitudes toward Russia and China, one might ask — particularly since one of the most troubling aspects of Miloš Zeman’s current presidency has been his soft spot for Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin? Although Zeman promptly distanced himself from the Kremlin following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, his earlier servility has left a bitter aftertaste — as has the over-the-top reception given to Xi on his first state visit to the Czech Republic in 2016.

But during Babiš’ four years as prime minister, his cabinet pursued a comparatively conventional, perhaps even somewhat hawkish, policy toward both countries. Babiš’ party, ANO 2011, is a member of Renew Europe — the left-liberal family of parties in the European Parliament — which was led by the European arch-federalist Guy Verhofstadt in its previous iteration.

Indeed, to drive home the point that he’s no Orbán-like pariah, Babiš even went on a quick visit to Paris a few days before the election’s first round, and was received not only by French President Emmanuel Macron but also by Bernard Arnault, the chairman of luxury conglomerate LVMH and the wealthiest man in the world, as well as exiled Czech writer Milan Kundera.

Finally, for those who fear the Czech Republic might go down the road of Poland and Hungary, there ought to be some relief in the fact that a Babiš presidency would be the kiss of death to his political party — a party built exclusively around its founder, with his own personal resources and with no governing philosophy other than his whims.

In short, whatever happens in the run-off, Czech democracy will be fine.

For all of Babiš’ flaws — including his frequently tasteless rhetoric, conflicts of interests and likely collaboration with the communist secret police — he’s no threat to his country’s constitutional system. And neither is he — as some critics would allege — an anomaly in the body politic.

Like it or not, Babiš and his clashes with Prague’s urban intelligentsia are exactly what vibrant democratic politics in Europe, and indeed in the advanced West, look like in the 21st century.


Link to original article on https://www.politico.eu/article/dont-worry-czech-democracy-will-be-fine/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication

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