The billionaire who will probably be the next Czech prime minister
It is hard to campaign against a newspaper owner
BACK when newspapers were king, Charles Brownson, an American congressman, used to say that one should never quarrel with anyone who buys ink by the barrel. The principle still stands, and it is making life difficult for opponents of Andrej Babis, a billionaire media magnate who until this week served as Czech finance minister. With a general election set for October, Mr Babis’s ANO party seems unassailable, polling at 33.5% against 16% for the second-place Social Democrats.
On May 2nd Bohuslav Sobotka, the prime minister, threatened to resign unless the country’s president fired Mr Babis over a questionable tax break he received in 2013. Mr Sobotka, a Social Democrat, hoped the attention to Mr Babis’s finances would stop his own party’s headlong slide. The finance minister eventually agreed to step down. But more Czechs blamed Mr Sobotka for the clash than Mr Babis, and it seems ever more likely that he will win.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "Paper tiger"
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