(8 Oct 2021) Czech Pirate party candidate Ivan Bartos cast his vote on Friday in the Czech parliamentary elections, and revealed his hopes that the young, middle-aged and old will come out to vote for him.
Two days of balloting are being held to fill 200 seats in the lower house of Parliament, the main legislative body in the eastern European country that's a member of the European Union and NATO.
Polls show Prime Minister Andrej Babis, a populist billionaire, has a good chance of keeping his job despite a new scandal over his financial dealings.
Euroskeptic Babis has had a turbulent term featuring numerous scandals.
Among them, police recommended that he should be indicted over alleged fraud involving EU subsidies, and a recently published EU report concluded that Babis has a conflict of interest over subsidies from the bloc involving his former business empire.
However all polls favour his centrist ANO (YES) movement to come first with at least 25% of the vote.
But it's not clear if Babis will win big enough to be able to form a new coalition government.
The latest scandal linked Babis to offshore accounts.
Both the Social Democrats and the Communists might struggle to win any parliamentary seats at all this time.
Five opposition parties have put aside their differences to create two coalitions aimed at ousting the euroskeptic prime minister from power.
The center-right Together coalition consists of the conservative Civic Democratic Party and Christian Democrats and the liberal-conservative TOP 09 party. The liberal Pirate Party and STAN, a group of mayors and independent candidates, formed a center-left coalition.
Each coalition is predicted to win about 20% of the vote, and they have both signaled that they would cooperate in forming a new government if given the chance.
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