ANO failed to take a single constituency in second round run-offs to one-third of the seats in the Senate, in which the Mayors and Independents scored biggest. But is ANO chairman Andrej Babiš right to call the outcome of the elections “disastrous” for the party? That’s a question I put to political scientist Petr Just.
“Given the results – zero seats – that is definitely a disaster.
“But I think Andrej Babiš should also think a little bit about the reasons for this disaster, and I think that some of them lay in his approach to the Senate, the way that he treats it.
Photo: Zuzana Jarolímková, iROZHLAS.cz
“He downplays the Senate’s role in the political system. He talks about it as a useless institution – so no wonder his voters don’t pay so much attention when it comes to Senate elections.
“Many ANO candidates failed in the second round because they didn’t even attract their own voters from the first round to go to the polls again.
“There are at least two or three electoral districts where if the ANO supporters from the first round came to the second one and cast their vote for the ANO candidate, the ANO candidates would win.
“So they could have two or three seats, instead of zero.”
But I guess this probably won’t impact ANO too much at national level?
“It won’t. I think ANO will still remain the strongest party, due to their strength in the Chamber of Deputies.
“I don’t expect any changes in the government either, so we can expect that the ruling majority in the Chamber of Deputies will still face the opposition majority in the Senate.
Senate|Photo: Senát PČR
“The Senate will once in a while return laws to the Chamber of Deputies, but the ruling majority in the Chamber will have enough votes to override the veto.
“And for ANO, I don’t think that any major changes will actually happen.
“Andrej Babiš says that ANO needs some kind of restart, but I’m not quite convinced that this is going to happen.
“ANO is mainly a party based on Andrej Babiš and what he thinks should be done.
“So if any restart is meant to happen, it happens to start with a restart of Andrej Babiš
“I don’t see it as realistic that ANO would do some restart against Andrej Babiš, or against the will of Andrej Babiš.”
Have these elections solved the question of who is the main opposition party?
Vít Rakušan (STAN) |Photo: Michaela Říhová, ČTK
“It was obvious that subconsciously this topic was present during both rounds of the Senate elections and the local elections, and that the leaders of the Mayors and Independents feel not only that they are the winners of these elections, but also that they are the ones who will now challenge Andrej Babiš.
“Of course, the Civic Democrats don’t want to give up this position. So in my opinion we will be witnessing between the Civic Democrats and the Mayors.
ODS|Photo: Michal Kamaryt, ČTK
“That’s despite the fact both parties have the same interests and are on the same side of the aisle and want to cooperate in opposition.
“But still we will see some tensions about who is the bigger party, because from the Chamber of Deputies point of view, it’s still the Civic Democrats.”