By-elections to Czech Senate: Babiš’s ANO party wins, but pro-European coalition retains majority

Following the re-election of one-third of the Senate, the upper house of the Czech Republic’s parliament, in two rounds of elections on September 20-21 and 27-28, the government coalition of five parties retains a majority, but former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s populist ANO party has improved its result.

According to preliminary estimates, Babiš’s ANO party won a total of eight of the 27 seats in the Senate that were up for re-election in the last election-two in the first round and six in the second, Novinky reports. This is the highest result for a single party.

In this case, ANO, together with the Social Democratic Party of the Czech Republic, will have 13 senators instead of the current six.

At the same time, the five parties of the Czech government coalition won 15 senators, which will allow it to retain a majority in the upper house of parliament.

Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s ODS party won the most seats – six, the Mayors and Independents movement got five seats, the Christian Democrats KDU-ČSL got two, and the liberal conservatives TOP 09 got one seat.

The Czech Communists, who showed good results in the regional elections as part of the leftist bloc, failed to get their candidate into the Senate.

Instead, the far-right populist party Přísaha, whose leader Róbert Šlachta won in Brzezlava and will become a senator, will enter parliament for the first time.

After the first results of the Senate by-elections were published, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala announced that the government coalition had defeated the opposition.

Earlier, on September 20-21, the Czech Republic held regional elections and re-elected one-third of the Senate (the upper house of parliament), resulting in the victory of the populist party of former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš ANO.

Andrej Babiš, head of the ANO party, praised his party’s regional victory as “a phenomenal success.” ANO is a member of a European far-right coalition that includes Hungary’s ruling party Fidesz and Austria’s far-right Freedom Party.

Because of its alliance with pro-Russian forces in the European Parliament (Orban, Le Pen, and Wilders), the ANO is considered pro-Russian in the Czech Republic. Former Czech Prime Minister Babiš is known for his skepticism of military support for Ukraine. For example, he referred to the Czech initiative to purchase shells for Ukraine as a “government PR initiative.”