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    Czech Republic Elects Petr Pavel President Over Andrej Babis

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    Petr Pavel, a political novice, defeated Andrej Babis, a populist business tycoon and former prime minister, in the first of several important European elections this year.The Czech Republic on Saturday elected Petr Pavel, a retired senior NATO general and political novice, as president, according to nearly complete results, with voters decisively rejecting the rival candidacy of a populist billionaire and cementing the country’s position as a robust supporter of Ukraine.Mr. Pavel, a former chief of the general staff of the Czech Army and chairman of the NATO Military Committee, defeated the tycoon Andrej Babis, a pugnacious former prime minister who had sought to cast his opponent in Saturday’s runoff vote as a warmonger intent on dragging Czech soldiers into the conflict in Ukraine.Mr. Babis’s tactics copied those of a close former ally, Hungary’s illiberal prime minister, Viktor Orban, who won a landside victory last April after falsely claiming that his main rival wanted to send Hungarian troops to fight Russia in Ukraine.But that argument flopped for Mr. Babis in the Czech Republic, which has far more diverse media outlets than Hungary, where Mr. Orban’s governing Fidesz party and its business allies have a tight grip on television and most other sources of information.With more than 99 percent of the votes counted, the tally gave Mr. Pavel a decisive victory: 58 percent to 42 percent. Two weeks ago, in the first round of voting, Mr. Pavel and Mr. Babis finished neck and neck.The Czech presidency is largely ceremonial, but the incumbent, Milos Zeman, who was barred from running by term limits, stretched its limited powers to try to tilt Czech foreign policy toward Russia and China and loosen the Central European country’s moorings in the West.Mr. Zeman, who last year dropped his previously pro-Kremlin views, did not upset the Czech government’s strong support for Ukraine, which has included sending tanks and other military hardware, but his reputation for heavy drinking and disruptive eccentricity has often raised questions abroad over the Czech Republic’s direction.Taking a swipe at Mr. Zeman’s decade-long tenure, Mr. Pavel on Saturday declared the election’s outcome a “victory for the values that we share — truth, respect, humility.”“I will make sure these values return to Prague Castle,” he added, referring to the seat of the Czech presidency.Neither Mr. Pavel nor Mr. Babis shares Mr. Zeman’s eastward leanings, but their race represented a stark clash in political styles — between low-key pragmatism and rambunctious populism.Andrej Babis arriving on Monday at a campaign event in Brno, Czech Republic. Mr. Babis was defeated by Mr. Pavel. Martin Divisek/EPA, via ShutterstockOtto Eibl, the head of the political science department at Masaryk University in the Czech city of Brno, said Mr. Pavel’s victory “could be a moment of calming and perhaps a step toward improving the political culture in the country.”“But,” Mr. Eibl continued, “it will depend on how Babis handles his defeat — whether he continues to add fuel to the fire, or acknowledges the victory” of his rival.Speaking on Saturday at his party’s headquarters in Prague, Mr. Babis conceded defeat, but he showed no sign of bowing out of politics. He said the result showed that he had strong support and could win the next parliamentary election in 2025.Mr. Pavel, a former paratrooper widely known as “the general,” campaigned on the slogan, “Leading with experience and calm in difficult times.” Mr. Babis, who was recently acquitted of fraud charges relating to European Union funding, fanned fears of war spreading to the Czech Republic, claiming that “the general does not believe in peace.”The clash between the two men made the vote — the first in a series of important elections this year in Eastern and Central Europe — a significant test of whether Europe’s once rising populist tide has crested.Despite the Czech president’s limited formal powers, the post carries great symbolic weight. This year’s election, with a first round of voting featuring eight candidates, stirred even more interest than usual, with more than 70 percent of voters casting ballots in Saturday’s runoff, the highest turnout in a Czech election.That populism continues to be a force was shown last year by Mr. Orban’s landslide victory in Hungary, but its fortunes elsewhere have been mixed. It suffered a big setback in the Czech Republic in October 2021 when Mr. Babis lost his post as prime minister after a broad alliance of centrist and leftist parties won a parliamentary election. Elections last year in Slovenia delivered another blow, with voters ousting Janez Jansa, a far-right admirer of Donald J. Trump and a close ally of Mr. Orban.But anti-establishment populism could gain ground in elections this year in Slovakia, whose centrist government collapsed in December, opening the way for a possible return to power by Robert Fico, a belligerent former prime minister tainted by corruption and other scandals.The key test, however, will be an election this fall in Poland, the region’s most populous country, which has been governed since 2015 by the deeply conservative and nationalist Law and Justice party.Barbora Petrova More

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      Petr Pavel and Andrej Babis to Face Off In Czech Republic Presidential Race

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      Both candidates, Petr Pavel and Andrej Babis, are expected to foster closer ties to the West.PRAGUE — In an election more important for what it ends than what it will bring, the Czech Republic completed the first round of voting for a new president on Saturday, starting the eclipse of an eccentric, hard-drinking incumbent who often put himself at odds with the Czech government and European allies by reaching out to Russia and China.With nearly all the votes counted, official results showed that none of the eight candidates running to replace President Milos Zeman, who is barred by term limits from running again, had won a clear majority. A runoff election will be held in two weeks between the top two finishers, both of whom favor closer relations with the West and the NATO alliance.No matter which of the top two candidates — a former NATO general, Petr Pavel, who won just over 35 percent of the vote, and a billionaire former prime minister, Andrej Babis, who got around 35 percent — eventually triumphs, the departure of Mr. Zeman, the Czech president for the past decade, should put the country’s foreign relations back on an unambiguously pro-Western path.The presidency is mostly ceremonial but Mr. Zeman used and, critics say, abused its limited powers to turn Prague Castle, the president’s grand official office, into an alternative foreign policy center focused on developing relations with the East rather than the West.President Milos Zeman of the Czech Republic speaking at Prague Castle in October. Martin Divisek/EPA, via ShutterstockJust days before first-round voting started on Friday, Mr. Zeman held a video conference call with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who called on Prague to “actively promote” China’s relations with East and Central Europe, not something that is likely once Mr. Zeman formally steps down in March.In an interview this week in Prague, the Czech foreign minister, Jan Lipavsky, who has often criticized China and whose appointment in 2021 Mr. Zeman tried unsuccessfully to block, said he looked forward to the post-Zeman era. “Of course, Zeman has a different view of certain areas and used to push quite heavily for more relaxed positions on Russia and China,” he said, adding that his departure should bring “a major new impulse” to Czech foreign policy.“After 10 years there will be a new figure sitting in Prague Castle and I take this as a big opportunity,” Mr. Lipavsky said. His ministry’s imposing colonnaded headquarters sits just a few hundred yards from Prague Castle, a route strewn with political and personal minefields.Otto Eibl, the head of the political science department at Masaryk University in the city of Brno, said the presidency, despite its restricted constitutional powers, carried special moral weight in the Czech Republic, in part because of the stature and international renown of Vaclav Havel, a writer who in 1989 became the first post-communist president of what was then Czechoslovakia.Petr Pavel, one of the two candidates chosen for the runoff election to succeed Mr. Zeman, at his campaign headquarters in Prague, on Saturday. Mr. Pavel had been the chairman of NATO’s Military Committee. Filip Singer/EPA, via Shutterstock“It is a ceremonial job but a symbol of something important for Czechs,” Mr. Eibl said, adding: “The Zeman era is over and regardless of who wins, the situation will change. He harmed Czech foreign policy. He was more open to the East, more open to Russia and to China.”That Czechs consider the presidency important was reflected in a voter turnout of more than 68 percent in the first round.The Czech government, headed by Prime Minister Petr Fiala, a center-right former academic, has been a robust supporter of Ukraine, providing Soviet-era T-72 tanks and other military hardware. But the government has had to constantly look over its shoulder at Mr. Zeman, who has backed his country’s policy on Ukraine but diverted attention from other foreign policy goals.Appalled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Zeman has in recent months curbed his earlier enthusiasm for close relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, while maintaining warm relations with Mr. Putin’s closest European friends, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia, both authoritarian strongman leaders.He has also lobbied hard against the Czech Republic following the Baltic States in taking a tough stand against China, despite the detention in China of his former special economic adviser, a mysterious Chinese energy tycoon, Ye Jianming.In contrast to Mr. Zeman, the two presidential candidates who will face off in a second round of voting at the end of January both look west, rather than east, even though each started his career in Communist-ruled Czechoslovakia and was a member of the Party.Andrej Babis, who is also running to succeed Mr. Zeman, arriving at his campaign headquarters in Prague, on Saturday. Mr. Babis is a former prime minister of the Czech Republic. David W Cerny/ReutersA day after Mr. Zeman spoke with Mr. Xi, Mr. Babis, a billionaire tycoon who figured as an informant on the books of the Communist-era secret service in Slovakia, flew to Paris to meet the French president, Emmanuel Macron. The Paris trip was widely seen as an effort to burnish his pro-Western credentials and fend of criticism from liberals that he will continue the eastward-leaning inclination of Mr. Zeman, a past political ally.Unlike Mr. Orban in Hungary, a fellow populist with whom he has good relations, Mr. Babis has evinced no sympathy for Russia and, during his time as prime minister from 2017 to 2021, he presided over a dramatic deterioration of relations with Moscow, accusing Russian military intelligence of blowing up a Czech arms depot in 2014. Mr. Zeman said Russia’s responsibility had not been clearly established, which challenged the findings of Czech and Western intelligence services.Mr. Babis’s rival in the runoff vote, Mr. Pavel, known as “the General,” also had close ties to the Communist system in the past but survived rigorous post-Communist vetting of his loyalties and rose to become chief of the Czech Army’s general staff before taking over as head of the NATO Military Committee.Mr. Zeman, a rambunctious, old-school politician with a knack for connecting with ordinary people, delights in offending effete liberal sensibilities and conventional wisdom. He has frequently been written off as a has-been, particularly when he was hospitalized in 2021 with what seemed like a life-threatening illness. He has always bounced back.But the election of a new president, Mr. Eibl said, means that “this really is the end of the Zeman era.” More

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      Czech Court Clears Andrej Babis of Fraud in E.U. Funds Case

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      Andrej Babis, a billionaire agriculturalist, had been accused of illegally obtaining farm subsidies for one of his properties.A Czech court on Monday cleared Andrej Babis, the billionaire former prime minister of the Czech Republic who became a symbol of how the E.U. farm subsidy program enriched the well-connected and powerful, of fraud charges in a case regarding one of his properties.The court on Monday cleared Mr. Babis of fraudulently obtaining E.U. subsidies for the property, citing lack of evidence, just days before the first round of a presidential election in the Czech Republic in which Mr. Babis is considered a front-runner.“NOT GUILTY!” Mr. Babis said on Twitter on Monday. “I am very happy that we have an independent judiciary and the court has confirmed what I have argued from the beginning. That I am innocent and have done nothing illegal.”The case revolved around Mr. Babis’s use of the E.U. farm subsidy program, a pot of money worth dozens of billions that is handed out every year.A 2019 New York Times investigation found that politicians used the money to enrich themselves and their political patrons. That did not necessarily mean they broke the law. The investigation found that Mr. Babis’s companies received $79 million in subsidies.In the case resolved on Monday, Mr. Babis was accused of fraudulently transferring a company to his wife and children as a way of receiving subsidies.The case is separate from an audit by the European Commission that found that as prime minister, Mr. Babis breached conflict of interest rules and influenced the allocation of E.U. subsidies to the business conglomerate he built. Mr. Babis has said that the audit was flawed.For a decade, Mr. Babis was dogged by scandals related to Agrofert, the conglomerate he built out of companies in a range of sectors including food and agriculture. It is one of the country’s largest employers.The case resolved Monday involved a farm in the Czech Republic known as the Stork’s Nest, which received about $2.2 million in E.U. subsidies after its ownership was transferred from Agrofert to Mr. Babis’s wife and children.The prosecutor had said that in 2007 and 2008 Mr. Babis removed the Stork’s Nest from Agrofert to allow it to qualify for E.U. funding as a small- to medium-size business, and accused him of fraud. In 2018 the funds the company received were returned to the European Union.The judge, Jan Sott, said on Monday that the prosecutor did not provide relevant evidence proving that Mr. Babis held shares of the Stork’s Nest. He also said “it was not proved that the acts as described by the prosecutor were criminal.” The decision can still be appealed.In 2017, Mr. Babis placed his businesses into a trust amid accusations of conflicts of interest. The farm is now part of that trust, according to Agrofert’s website.Mr. Babis has also been accused of purchasing a villa and other properties on the French Riviera worth more than $20 million through offshore shell companies. According to French media, he is facing an investigation in France into money laundering. He has denied any wrongdoing.Mr. Babis, who was the finance minister between 2014 and 2017 and prime minister between 2017 and 2021, had not entered politics when he bought the French properties.In 2019, Czechs organized large demonstrations calling for Mr. Babis’s resignation. In 2021, he was defeated in parliamentary elections.In the presidential election set to take place on Friday and Saturday, Mr. Babis is running against Gen. Petr Pavel, a former NATO official, and Danuse Nerudova, a university professor and economist, both of whom are supported by the political coalition of Prime Minister Petr Fiala.On Monday, Mr. Fiala said on Facebook that the court’s verdict needed to be respected.“The actual political fights in democracy take place during elections,” he added. “Let’s come to the polls and let’s solve our future.” More

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      Czechs Defeat a Populist, Offering a Road Map for Toppling Strongmen

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      A wide range of parties in the Czech Republic banded together despite their differences to oppose Andrej Babis, the country’s populist prime minister. Opposition parties in Hungary are hoping to duplicate the feat.ROZDROJOVICE, Czech Republic — Marie Malenova, a Czech pensioner in a tidy, prosperous village in South Moravia, had not voted since 1989, the year her country held its first free elections after more than four decades of communist rule.Last Friday, however, she decided to cast a vote again, an event so unusual that her disbelieving family recorded her change of heart, taking photographs of her slipping her ballot into a big white box at the village hall.She said she did not much like the people she voted for, a coalition of previously divided center-right parties, describing them as “a smaller evil among all our many thieves.” But they at least had a simple and clear message: We can beat Andrej Babis, the Czech Republic’s populist, billionaire prime minister.“I wanted a change,” Ms. Malenova said, “and I wanted something that could beat Babis.”For the past decade, populists like Mr. Babis have often seemed politically invincible, rising to power across Central and Eastern Europe as part of a global trend of strongman leaders disdainful of democratic norms. But on Saturday, the seemingly unbeatable Mr. Babis was defeated because opposition parties put ideological differences aside and joined together to drive out a leader they fear has eroded the country’s democracy.Petr Fiala, center, a former political scientist and university rector who led one of two opposition coalitions, at a news conference on Saturday in Prague.EPA, via ShutterstockTheir success could have major repercussions in the region and beyond. In Hungary and in Poland, where nationalist leaders have damaged democratic institutions and sought to undermine the European Union, opposition leaders are mobilizing, trying to forge unified fronts and oust populist leaders in upcoming elections.“Populism is beatable,” said Otto Eibl, the head of the political science department at Masaryk University in Brno, the South Moravian capital. “The first step in beating a populist leader is to suppress individual egos and to compromise in the interest of bringing a change.”The biggest showdown could come in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban has promoted himself as Europe’s standard-bearer for “illiberal democracy,” while his Fidesz party has steadily stripped away democratic checks, squeezing independent media and the judiciary. Mr. Orban has staked out right-wing political positions — including hostility to immigration, the European Union and L.G.B.T.Q. rights (if also proving adept at adopting left-wing welfare policies) — that have been emulated by his allies in Poland, the governing Law and Justice party.In recent years, champions of liberal democracy have been confounded in their efforts to battle their way back into power against nationalist leaders skilled at stoking fear and presenting themselves as saviors. Faced with well-oiled and well-financed political machines, like Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party or Mr. Babis’s party, Ano, opposition forces have been notoriously divided — until now.Prime Minister Andrej Babis after the election results were announced on Saturday in Prague.Petr David Josek/Associated PressThis weekend, six Hungarian parties will complete a weekslong opposition primary race, the first of its kind, to whittle down the list of potential contenders in every electoral district to oppose Mr. Orban’s party. The coalition includes groups ranging from nationalist conservatives to leftists, who disagree on most things but share a fervent desire to dispatch Mr. Orban.In Poland, Donald Tusk, a former prime minister and European Council president, returned to Poland this summer to rally the main opposition party and people who often do not vote, and lure support from a plethora of other opposition groups.The appeals for opposition unity have also been evident in Russia, where parliamentary elections held last month were neither free nor fair. Allies of the jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny had been trying to persuade voters to rally behind a single opposition candidate in each constituency, whether they liked the candidate or not, in the name of trying to win a single seat and breaking President Vladimir V. Putin’s complete stranglehold on power.It did not work — partly because most real opposition candidates were kept off the ballot, but also because Mr. Putin’s government pressured companies to remove a “smart voting” app that the opposition was using to coordinate its campaign.Mr. Babis, right, with Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary last month in Prague.David W. Cerny/ReutersLike Mr. Putin, Europe’s populist leaders claim to be defending traditional Christian values against decadent liberals, but unlike Mr. Putin, they have to hold real elections. Until recently, they were helped by the fact that opposition parties splintered the vote, meaning that few of those parties had much chance of beating highly organized governing parties.Those governing parties have also gained significant control over media in their countries. In the Czech Republic, Mr. Babis owns a media holding company with newspapers, internet portals and other news outlets. In Hungary, Mr. Orban has placed state television and much of private media under the control of loyal allies or business cronies.Peter Kreko, the director of Political Capital, a research group in Budapest, described Hungary as “the most captured state with the most centralized media environment” in Europe. Yet he said the new mobilization by Hungary’s opposition parties could change the political dynamic there.“They have a good message: If you fight against populists, things can be different,” Mr. Kreko said.In the Czech elections, that was largely the theme. While Mr. Babis is seen as less extreme than Mr. Orban, he has alienated many people in the Czech Republic. They see him as a bully whose wealth and corporate ties have given him an inordinate amount of power.The Russian opposition politicians Aleksei A. Navalny, right, Lyubov Sobol and Ivan Zhdanov in February 2020 at a rally in Moscow.Shamil Zhumatov/ReutersMarie Jilkova, a successful anti-Babis candidate in South Moravia from one of the two coalitions of parties that came together to oppose the prime minister, said that banding together to confront Mr. Babis and his party machine “was, for us, the only way to survive — there was no alternative.”Her own party, the Christian Democrats, differs on issues like abortion and gay marriage from the more centrist parties in her coalition, so, she said, “we agreed that we would not talk about these things during the campaign.”Faced with a united bloc of center-right opponents, Mr. Babis and his Ano party veered to the right, railing against immigration and the European Union. He invited Mr. Orban to campaign with him.Since he first entered politics nearly a decade ago, Mr. Babis has been inundated with questions about his financial affairs and those of his conglomerate, Agrofert. A week before the election, documents surfaced as part of the Pandora Papers project by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists showing how he shuffled more than $20 million through offshore shell companies in 2009 to buy property in France.Experts disagree on whether the disclosure had a significant effect on the race, but the revelations clearly rattled Mr. Babis.“He was desperate to find issues that would scare people and convince them that only he could save them,” Ms. Jilkova said in an interview in Brno. “Fortunately, it didn’t work.”Nationally, the opposition coalitions won 108 of 200 seats in the Parliament, a clear majority.In Rozdrojovice, where Ms. Malenova cast her first vote since 1989, Ms. Jilkova’s coalition benefited from a high turnout and won 37.3 percent of the vote, a big jump on what its component parties got when they ran separately four years ago.Donald Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland, on Sunday in Warsaw. He has been trying to rally opposition support.Slawomir Kaminski/Agencja Gazeta Via ReutersPetr Jerousek, who runs a wine business and owns a pub in Rozdrojovice, said his customers did not usually talk much about politics, but, faced with a choice between Mr. Babis and his foes, “they sometimes got very excited in their discussion.”Mr. Jerousek was ecstatic about the final results late Saturday. “People finally opened their eyes,” he said. “They have had enough.”Petr Stransky, a former police officer who now drives a municipal bus, was despondent. “I don’t like disorder and like things to be clear in society,” he said, bemoaning Mr. Babis’s defeat at the hands of what he said was unfair ganging up by opposition parties.“When we were fighting as kids in the schoolyard it was always one against one. Five kids fighting against one was cowardly. It was clear who would win,” he said. “This election was the same. It was not fair.”The mayor of the village, Daniel Strasky, said that while he wanted to see Mr. Babis go, he did not vote because he objected to an alliance between his own party, which represents mayors and other local dignitaries, and the Pirates, a rambunctious group popular with young voters.But, he added, the loveless electoral marriage was probably worthwhile because it helped defeat Mr. Babis, whose handouts to pensioners, young rail travelers and other budget-busting measures offended the mayor’s belief in financial discipline.Mr. Strasky was also distressed by the prime minister’s anti-immigration tirades, especially because a family from Vietnam runs the village’s only food store.“I and everyone else in the village are so glad they are here,” the mayor said. “Nobody else would ever run that shop.”A demonstration on Sunday in Warsaw in support of the European Union. Poland’s governing party has long been at odds with the bloc over rule-of-law issues.Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBenjamin Novak More

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      Populist Leader of Czech Republic Narrowly Defeated in Election

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      The results suggest that the populist wave in Eastern and Central Europe is receding, stalled by the growing unity of its opponents and a crisis of confidence after the defeat of the former U.S. president.PRAGUE — In a blow to Europe’s once surging populist politicians, the prime minister of the Czech Republic, a pugnacious businessman who has compared himself to Donald Trump and railed against migrants, suffered a surprising defeat in a parliamentary election that ended on Sunday.After two days of voting, near-final results indicated that a center-right coalition of parties led by a button-down former academic had won the largest share of votes, narrowly ahead of a party led by the scandal-singed prime minister, Andrej Babis.Czech Television calculated that opposition groups would win 108 of 200 seats in the lower house of Parliament, meaning that Mr. Babis, a billionaire, had little chance of staying on as prime minister.The results, which showed a nationalist party led by a Czech-Japanese firebrand getting around 9.6 percent of the vote, were far from an unequivocal rejection of far-right populism. But the strong showing by the mainstream coalition and a socially liberal opposition group, the Pirates, allied with another party dominated by local mayors, suggested that a populist wave in Eastern and Central Europe is perhaps receding.That wave, lifted though not created by Mr. Trump’s surprising 2016 election victory, has lost much of its momentum of late, stalled by the growing unity of its previously squabbling opponents and a crisis of confidence among European nationalists created by Mr. Trump’s defeat last November.Mr. Babis, speaking on television late Sunday, insisted that his party, ANO, had a “great result” given that “there were 5 parties against us with only one program — to take down Babis.” But he conceded that “we did not expect to lose,” blaming the defeat on Prague, the capital, where voters are generally far more liberal than elsewhere in the country.Supporters of the Together coalition celebrated on Saturday.EPA, via ShutterstockMembers of the victorious center-right coalition, Together, were exultant over their unexpected, albeit very small, win: 27.8 percent of the vote for them versus 27.13 percent for Mr. Babis’s party.At the coalition’s headquarters in central Prague, one of its candidates, Hayato Okamura, the older brother of the nationalist leader Tomio Okamura, rejoiced at his own camp’s success. He called it “God’s will,” saying that as a devout Christian, he had been praying for days that his brother and what he described as “far-right extremists” would not prevail. “They do not belong in a decent government,” he said.The Czech vote will be disquieting news for the Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, the self-declared standard-bearer of “illiberal democracy,” whose Fidesz party faces elections next year and could well lose if its fractious opponents stick to pledges to form a united front.Slovenia’s prime minister, Janez Jansa, a close ally of Mr. Orban and like-minded scourge of liberal elites, whom he calls communists, has also struggled, with his party’s approval rating slumping in opinion polls.The Czech vote was so close that it will likely lead to a long period of haggling as different groups try to form a government. The president, Milos Zeman, who is gravely ill and partial to Mr. Babis, could ask the defeated prime minister to form a government as leader of the single party with the most votes in the election. But opposition groups, which together won more seats in Parliament, will likely torpedo any attempt by Mr. Zeman to keep Mr. Babis in power.Mr. Babis, the Czech Republic’s bruised prime minister, long stood apart from the often vicious, anti-immigrant language deployed by the leaders of Hungary, Slovenia and also Poland, led by Law and Justice, a deeply conservative and nationalist party. But, in an effort to mobilize voters before polling stations opened on Friday, he adopted the anti-immigrant theme with gusto.With Mr. Orban as his guide, Mr. Babis in late September visited a border fence built by Hungary in 2015 to keep out asylum seekers from war zones and economic migrants trying to enter from Serbia. A few days later, Mr. Orban visited the Czech Republic, saying that “Hungarians would be happy to have such a great prime minister like Babis.”Ivan Bartos, leader of the Pirates, a party that will play a key role in government talks. Radek Mica/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Babis’s election campaign featured pledges to “fight until my dying breath” against immigration, and also against ice-cream made with foreign milk.“He succeeded in making migration one of the main issues of the election, but anti-immigrant talk wasn’t enough; he lost,” Otto Eibl, the head of the political science department at Masaryk University in Brno, the Czech Republic’s second-most populous city, said in a telephone interview.The election, he added, did not revolve around policy choices but “was a referendum on Andrej Babis.”Neither the opposition coalition nor Mr. Babis won an outright majority of seats, but a small party on which Mr. Babis had previously relied to form a government failed to win any seats, opening the way for his rivals to stitch together a majority in the legislature.“People were fed up with the populist, short-term politics of Andrej Babis,” said Petr Fiala, a former political scientist and university rector who led the anti-Babis coalition and is now best placed to become prime minister. “We want to do normal, competent and decent politics and people have believed in us.”“The change we have promised is here. And we will make it happen,” Mr. Fiala added, speaking on television as the last votes were being counted.To do that, however, he needs to form an alliance with the Pirates, an anti-establishment party that supports gay marriage and other progressive causes, something that many of Mr. Fiala’s more conservative followers reject.The results, while far from a decisive victory for the opposition, delivered an unexpected rebuke to Mr. Babis, a tycoon who has dominated the Czech political scene for nearly a decade, mixing right-wing populist rhetoric with traditionally left-wing policies like pension increases and support for the disadvantaged.The Czech Republic’s fourth-wealthiest businessman, Mr. Babis first entered politics in 2011 and, prefiguring Mr. Trump’s cry of “drain the swamp” adopted the slogan of “end the political morass.”But he has since been swamped by a series of scandals involving funding from the European Union, accusations that he collaborated with communist-era intelligence services, and the purchase, through offshore shell companies, of a villa and other properties on the French Riviera worth more than $20 million.His opaque property deals became known during the last days of the election campaign thanks to a documents released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.The documents, known as the Pandora Papers, exposed how the rich and powerful, particularly politicians, use offshore structures to hide their wealth. The shuffling of funds through opaque shell companies is not necessarily illegal and Mr. Babis, who had not entered politics when he bought his French properties, dismissed the papers as a political hit commissioned by a left-wing “mafia” comprising his enemies.Mr. Eibl said the revelations had probably played an insignificant role in the election, noting that few people voted for Mr. Babis because they believed he was clean. A recent survey of his supporters found that only 22 percent think he is honest.“Of course he is not 100 percent clean, but he is no worse than all our other politicians,” said Vera Hrdlickova on Sunday after casting her vote for Mr. Babis’s party at a polling station in Prague.Pavla Holcova, a Czech journalist who worked with the journalists consortium on the Pandora Papers, dismissed as absurd claims last week by Mr. Babis that the documents about his property dealings had been released to damage his chances. “Andrej Babis is not such an important global figure that 600 international journalists decided on the timing in order to hurt him,” she said.Most, she added, had never heard of Mr. Babis.Barbora Petrova contributed reporting. More