A quiet revolution in #Prague

On 4 June, protesters took to the streets of Prague in their thousands. Unfurling banners emblazoned with the words “Enough” and “Resign”, and chanting "Shame! Shame!” at  their Prime Minister Andrej Babus they flooded into the capital’s Wenceslas Square, writes Colin Stevens.

The ram-packed half-mile-long square could not have been a more fitting stage for the largest demonstration to be held in the Czech Republic in three decades.

For it was here that the Czech people rallied during the Velvet Revolution, asserting their collective will to topple the communist rule in the country.

Now, with the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia a distant memory, it’s another oppressor that the people are seeking to remove - the democratically elected leader of the country, Andrej Babiš.

Demonstrations against the Prime Minister began in April and have been steadily growing in momentum ever since. Over 120,000 people are estimated to have joined the recent rally, almost double those who attended a rally held two weeks earlier.

The rate of growth and the increasingly diverse social make-up of the movement certainly bodes well for its impact and longevity. Opposition to Babis has traditionally been most entrenched in the more liberal and cosmopolitan sections of society, but the sheer number of participants now points to a diverse and burgeoning movement, one that has a real chance of challenging Babis’s premiership.

This most recent wave of protests centred around the so-called Stork’s Nest case. The long-running saga concerns €2 million-worth of EU subsidies intended for small businesses that were received by a conference centre outside Prague. The business, which Babis claims was owned by family members, was folded into his Agrofert conglomerate shortly after.

It’s safe to say that Agrofert, a behemoth comprising over 900 companies across seven countries, does not qualify for small business subsidies.

The case came to a head a few weeks ago, when Czech police recommended, following a thorough investigation, that prosecutors charge Babis with fraud.

This prompted the justice minister, who wields considerable influence over the prosecution service, to suddenly step down from his post. Fears that Babis is preparing to install a loyalist who’s ready to suppress the charges are now, understandably, rife.

Such a brazen attempt at stifling the legal process would certainly be alarming, but it would hardly come as a surprise given the “Czech Donald Trump”’s chequered history.

In fact, it is not this scandal alone that has stoked the ire of anti-Babis protesters.

A separate EU audit recently reached a damning conclusion. According to a leak, the Commission has provisionally concluded that Babis has a conflict of interest in relation to Agrofert.

Although Babis was forced to put the conglomerate into a trust in 2017, the EU found there to be an insufficient separation between his executive powers and his former business. As the founder and beneficiary of the trust funds, according to the investigation Babis still retains a direct economic interest in the success of the business.

Confirmation of the audit would be extremely politically damaging for the Czech PM and would be certain to further inflame the burgeoning protest movement.

The protesters will be encouraged by their Slovakian neighbours’ experience last year. There, huge protests eventually forced the resignation of PM Robert Fico following the murder of an investigative journalist. Czech demonstrators, who have a considerable burden of proof to lay at Babis’s door, will now be hoping to emulate that success.

As a proud people, still dogged by the memory of living under a Communist totalitarian regime, they will not simply sit back and allow the erosion of their democracy to pass unchallenged.

A quiet revolution is brewing in Prague, and Wenceslas Square has seen its fair share of politically momentous occasions. Maybe, just maybe, we are about to witness another.

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