Europe | There will be mud

The next Czech president will be a Trumpish oligarch or a general

The election’s first round was a draw, so voters try again in two weeks

Presidential candidate in Czech presidential election 2023 and Former Chief of the General Staff of the Army of the Czech Republic Petr Pavel and his wife Eva visit, on January 14, 2023 a pub in Prague during the first round of the presidential elections. (Photo by Michal Cizek / AFP) (Photo by MICHAL CIZEK/AFP via Getty Images)

Jan 17th 2023

Prague castle, the Gothic rockpile that looms over the Czech capital like a giant bat, is the official residence of the country’s president. In a Kafkaesque touch, no president has actually lived there in decades. On January 13th and 14th eight candidates vied to become the castle’s next official occupant, and in another Kafkaesque touch, none of them won. Andrej Babis, an oligarch who served as prime minister until the autumn of 2021, and Petr Pavel, a retired general, finished neck-and-neck in the first round of the election. With the second round scheduled for January 27th and 28th, Mr Babis has unleashed a viciously negative campaign. It will be a “uniquely disgusting” two weeks, predicts Karel Schwarzenberg, a former Czech foreign minister who ran for president in 2013 and now backs Mr Pavel.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “There will be mud”