Czech President Petr Pavel has threatened not to appoint the winner of the last parliamentary elections, Andrej Babis, as prime minister due to a conflict of interest, DPA reported, quoted by BTA.
Pavel said that Babis must choose whether to be an entrepreneur or a politician. “If Andrej Babis does not find a solution to the conflict of interest he is in, I would contribute to the emergence of an illegal situation if I appoint him“, the Czech president explained. He added that it would be better for the winning party to propose another candidate for prime minister.
A law against conflict of interest was passed in the Czech Republic in 2007.
Babiš is a billionaire and a well-known critic of the EU. His Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) party won last month's parliamentary elections with 34.5 percent of the vote.
During his first term as prime minister (2017-2021), Babis placed his companies in a trust fund that was later dissolved. He declined to say whether he would repeat the approach in his new term.
The president issued his warning on the day the Czech Republic marks the anniversary of the Gentle Revolution that marked the beginning of the transition to democracy. A number of politicians, including Babis, laid wreaths at a memorial dedicated to a large student demonstration that was brutally suppressed on November 17, 1989.