Babis Survives No-Confidence Vote

Andrej Babis

The coalition government led by Prime Minister Andrej Babis survived a no-confidence vote in Parliament over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Thanks to the Communists refusal to participate in the vote, Babis’ government survived a vote of no confidence in the Chamber of Deputies. Some commentators see the Communist deputies’ motivation to remain among the potential partners of Babiš after the October elections if he re-formed the government by leaving the hall by leaving the hall.

If the opposition was willing to risk Zeman creating his own cabinet after expressing distrust of the government, it does not prove a godly degree of political rationality, the commentary in Hospodářské noviny (HN) writes. “For now, we can all rest, we have a dangerous game behind us,” the daily added.

“Right-wing voters should thank the communists,” the Právo column said. What is the advantage if Babiš’s cabinet continues to rule without a center of gravity in the Chamber of Deputies, handed over to President Zeman, he notes.

HN reminded that Zeman announced that he would let Babiš’s government come to power until the autumn elections. According to the daily, Zeman would like to agree with the communists to overthrow the government and create a presidential cabinet to defend their common interests in resolving the conflict with Russia, but the president has no people for ministerial positions and KSCM leader Vojtech Filip no longer holds the party as tight as ever. “So it will move on. Babiš will chaotically slap between his own ambitions, incompetence and fear of Miloš Zeman. Zeman will watch what he would jerk politically. And the opposition will denounce all this with (in) results proportional to the number of seats in the House.” HN writes.

The Communists cannot expect anything from the Coalition Together or from the Pirates after the elections, but Babiš can be desperately looking for any allies, the Right is looking for motivation of the KSČM to support Babiš’s government. “The cards are still not distributed so clearly that the two opposition blocs would form a majority cabinet themselves. The ANO movement can knock on the window to the Communists in the autumn,” HN writes.

Also, according to commentator Mladá fronta Dnes (MfD), the Communists no longer have anything to do with Babiš’s government, but they have no reason to help the so-called demoblock to pre-election success and may have wanted to maintain a faint hope that Babiš could invite them back into the game. “Disposing of the government four months before the elections with all the consequences for the country’s reputation or the fight against the covid would be completely inconsistent with how the KSČM presented itself in recent years,” HN writes.

The Communists’ approach to the vote of no confidence is not an expression of cleverness, as some people think, but rather pure despair, the Lidové noviny (LN) column writes. According to the daily, it will not be easy for the KSČM to explain their policy to the part of their voters famous for nationalism and the rejection of the rich, even if they were until recently willing to accept the support of the Communists to the Slovak government and the billionaire. “It was still possible to justify the support for Andrej Babiš with verbal pirouettes, but this is more difficult and the communists’ poor pre-election preferences will not help,” the author of the column said.