Czech PM's Party Loses In Close Election; New Gov't Looms

Czech Republic's billionaire prime minister appears to have lost his grip on power after his populist party failed to win a majority in Saturday's nail-bitingly close election.

Photo Insert: Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babiš casts his vote.

The results mean opposition coalitions could now join forces to grab power after a dramatic day at the ballot box, John Mastrini and Sheena McKenzie reported for CNN.

Andrej Babiš's ANO party was edged out by the narrowest of margins by the two opposition coalitions trying to unseat him, according to the Czech Statistical Office.

With 100% of the votes counted, the center-right alliance Spolu (Together) won the most votes with 27.79% of the ballots, followed by Babiš's ANO party with 27.12%, and the centrist PirStan coalition on 15.62%, according to a tally of votes on the statistical office's website.

The tight election also comes just days after a Pandora Papers investigation into controversial financial dealings by Babiš and other world leaders. The report claimed the Czech prime minister secretly moved $22 million through offshore companies to purchase an estate on the French Riviera in 2009, before he entered politics.

A businessman who is worth about $3.4 billion, according to Bloomberg, Babiš has railed against the elite since he became prime minister in 2017, vowing to crack down on tax avoidance.

While Babiš's party ANO won the most votes of any single party, it does not have any clear path to a majority after Saturday's vote. "We are the change. You are the change," Spolu coalition leader Petr Fiala said Saturday, claiming victory before a cheering crowd.

The leader of the PirStan coalition, Ivan Bartoš, said talks with Spolu "on the possibilities of forming a new government" would likely begin on Saturday. "The dominance of Andrej Babiš is over, and the democratic parties have shown that the era of chaos will probably be behind us," Bartoš said.

After winning a combined 108 seats in the 200-seat lower house on Saturday, talks between the two coalitions who campaigned against Babiš ended with the leaders of the five parties in the combined coalitions signing a memorandum to work together to form the next government.

The memorandum was a challenge to President Miloš Zeman who has said prior to the election that he would choose the leader of the single party with the largest vote count, and not any coalition, to form the next government.

Addressing a news conference in Prague, Fiala said "what is fundamental is that according to the Constitution of the Czech Republic, the government must command a majority in the lower house."

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