Pro-western Petr Pavel sweeps to landslide win in race for Czech presidency
Source: The Observer
Pro-western Petr Pavel sweeps to landslide win in race for Czech presidency
Champagne flows as former general defeats billionaire populist rival Andrej Babiš by largest margin in the country’s history
Robert Tait in Prague
Sat 28 Jan 2023 18.22 GMT
First published on Sat 28 Jan 2023 15.04 GMT
Petr Pavel, a retired general and former senior Nato commander, has swept to the Czech presidency after a landslide victory over the former prime minister Andrej Babiš in an election overshadowed by rows over the war between Russia and Ukraine.
With nearly all the votes counted, returns showed Pavel prevailing by the emphatic margin of 58.3% to 41.68%, the largest ever recorded in a Czech presidential poll and reflecting an advantage of more than 958,000 votes nationwide.
Pavel’s supporters immediately hailed the result as a victory for liberal democracy over oligarchic populism, which they believe Babiš represents.
As the scale of his triumph became clear, Pavel, 61, a former army chief of staff and Nato second-in-command, was greeted by ecstatic chants of “president, president” from champagne-drinking supporters as he mounted the podium at his campaign headquarters in Prague’s Karlín district.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/28/petr-pavel-wins-landslide-victory-in-czech-presidential-elections
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