Pundit: Czech voters are giving the government a second chance
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Loading... - Julien Heeren
- 17 Oct 2022
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The weekend municipal and Senate elections took place in an atmosphere of growing concern about soaring energy costs, inflation and the global security situation, raising fears that this might fuel nationalist and extremist tendencies. I asked commentator JiÅ™í Pehe whether the election results gave any indication this could be happening.
“Well, we have seen a certain rise in support for the populist ANO party of Andrej Babiš and Tomio Okamura’s Freedom and Direct Democracy, so one could argue that, yes, the crisis has helped these political movements, but at the same time their rise has not been as significant as many predicted. So it seems that in the end, Czech voters are still giving the government a second chance and certainly the elections were not a referendum –to use Andrej Babiš’ vocabulary -that would indicate that people want to replace the government.”
If there was a message in these elections to the government –what was it?
“I think the message was “ Do something, be more decisive, act faster” and so on. But it also said “we are giving you a second chance” because the victory of the opposition parties was not overwhelming, it was mediocre and so the elections did not turn out to be a referendum on the government as Mr. Babiš wanted them to be.” Read More...
