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Billionaire Babis scores big Czech election win, seeks partners to rule

Other News Materials 22 October 2017 03:04 (UTC +04:00)
Czech billionaire Andrej Babis won a thumping victory in Saturday's election as voters shunned traditional parties and gave a mandate to the anti-establishment businessman pledging to fight political corruption
Billionaire Babis scores big Czech election win, seeks partners to rule

Czech billionaire Andrej Babis won a thumping victory in Saturday's election as voters shunned traditional parties and gave a mandate to the anti-establishment businessman pledging to fight political corruption, Reuters reported.

Babis’s ANO movement got 29.6 percent of the vote, nearly three times as much as anyone else in an election that saw a record nine parties secure seats in parliament’s lower house. He now faces the tricky task of finding willing government partners ready to overlook his legal troubles and domineering manner.

ANO is the first party to break a quarter century of dominance by two mainstream centre-right and centre-left parties, highlighting a shift in Europe where a refugee crisis has helped the rise of protest groups.

Babis has promised to bring his business expertise to government. He pledges to resist deeper integration of the European Union and any efforts in Brussels to force the country of 10.6 million to take in refugees.

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