The Czech center-left Social Democrats were expected to announce on Friday that their members had agreed to join a coalition with the dominant centrist ANO group which would end more than eight months of stalemate after an inconclusive election.
Party sources said partial results of a ballot suggested the plan would be approved – even though some members had objected to joining any government led by ANO chief Andrej Babis who is facing a fraud investigation.
“We were told that even if all remaining members vote against, it won’t change the result,” one of the party’s members of parliament told Reuters. Another party official said the vote would back the new coalition.
Babis, who is being investigated by police looking into the alleged abuse of a 2 million euro EU subsidy a decade ago, has struggled to find anyone to team up with him in power since his party won nearly 30 percent of the vote in October.
But he has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the inquiry as a plot against him.
An ANO-CSSD government would have 93 votes in the NATO member’s 200-seat lower house and would have to rely on support from the anti-NATO, pro-Russian Communist party to survive the confidence vote that always takes place in the month after a cabinet is appointed.
The Communists have indicated they would vote for the cabinet, although Babis has refused to bow to some of their policy demands such as scaling back participation in NATO foreign military missions.
Babis has pledged to keep the country on a firmly pro-Western course despite the pending deal with the Communists, who have had no share on national government since their totalitarian rule ended in 1989.
On Friday, the Communist leadership approved a list of conditions for the party’s support for the cabinet, including protection of natural resources or growth in minimum wage and pensions. The party said it would make a final decision on whether to back the government by the end of June.
Babis has already promised to raise wages in the public sector and boost infrastructure investments while cutting taxes. The country ran public finance surpluses in the past two years, allowing looser fiscal policy.
The Communists will have an ally in pro-Russian President Milos Zeman in pushing the government’s direction in areas such as energy where the next cabinet is due to decide on enlarging two existing nuclear power plants. The deal, worth billions of dollars, would be Czech Republic’s biggest investment and Russia is a leading contender for participation in the project.
Zeman, who formally appoints cabinet members, has shown he would also try to influence personnel issues. He has objected to the nomination of a pro-European Social Democrat member as foreign minister.
Babis has served in a caretaker capacity since his first, one-party cabinet lost a confidence vote in January.
He has said a new cabinet could be formed by the end of June and would seek a confidence vote after July 9.
