By Jan Lopatka
PRAGUE (Reuters) -Czech billionaire Andrej Babis’ populist ANO party took a wide early lead in the country’s parliamentary election on Saturday, according to partial results after 10% of voting districts had been counted.
ANO was leading with 39.7% of the vote, with the Spolu (Together) group led by Prime Minister Petr Fiala in second place with 19.1%.
Early results tend to be from smaller districts where in the past ANO and other opposition parties have been stronger, while Spolu fares better in bigger cities that take longer to be counted.
If Babis, a former prime minister, wins enough to form a government, he would strengthen the populist, anti-immigration camp in Europe and reduce Czech support for Ukraine.
Babis is an ally of Hungarian leader Viktor Orban and teamed up with a number of far-right parties in the Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament to challenge the mainstream direction of Europe’s polices, including decarbonisation.
Babis, who led a centre-left cabinet in 2017-2021, has said he aimed for a one-party government.
The results so far show ANO would fall short of a majority, so the key to forming a government will be how other parties fare.
ANO has ruled out an agreement with the current ruling parties and the liberal Pirates, which were in government until last year.
That means he may have to turn for support to the Motorists party, which opposes the European Union’s phase-out of combustion cars, but possibly also the far-right SPD, or the far-left Stacilo!, which stood below the 5% threshold to enter parliament in the early partial results.
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka, Radovan Stoklasa, Jason Hovet and Michael Kahn; editing by Mark Heinrich, Alexandra Hudson and Susan Fenton)
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