Monitoring Desk
PRAGUE: Retired NATO general Petr Pavel beat a billionaire former prime minister in an election runoff to become the fourth president of the Czech Republic, official results suggested.
The 61 years old Pavel will replace President Milos Zeman, an outspoken and divisive politician, in March. Pavel fostered close ties with Russia before making a U-turn when Russia invaded Ukraine last year. “I can see that values such as respect, truth, dignity, and humility have won in this election,” Gen. Petr Pavel said.
Petr Pavel wins 58 percent of the votes
Pavel, also a former paratrooper, won 58 percent of the votes while Andrej Babis bagged 42 percent, with 99 percent of the vote counted, according to the Statistical Office. “I would like to thank those who voted for me and also those who did not but came to the polls, because they made it clear they cared about this country and honoured democracy,” Pavel said after the results showed his victory.
Turnout in the NATO and EU member country of 10.5 million people remained unusually high at 70 percent following an acrimonious campaign marked by controversy. Babis and his family were targeted by death threats, while Pavel was the victim of a hoax claiming before the elections that he was dead as disinformation plagued the election campaign.
While the role of the Czech president is largely ceremonial, he names the government, picks the central bank governor and constitutional judges, and serves as commander of the armed forces. Pavel will be the fourth president of the NATO member country since the country’s independence following its split with Slovakia in 1993. The split came four years after former Czechoslovakia shed four decades of totalitarian communist rule.
Graduate of a military university, Petr Pavel, was decorated as a hero amidst the Serbo-Croatian war when he helped rescue the French troops from a war zone. He rose to chair of NATO’s military committee and chief of the Czech general staff. Like Babis, Pavel was also a member of the Communist Party in the 1980s.
