Presidential candidate Andrej Babis has charged against his rival in the imminent second round, Petr Pavel, whom he compared to Vladimir Putin and recalled his past as a «communist secret agent».
Babis congratulated Pavel for being the most voted candidate in the first round of the presidential elections, held between Friday and Saturday, but immediately questioned his chances in the second round.
«I don’t understand why he is running» before calling him an «agent of communist intelligence.» «I congratulate him for making it to the NATO military committee despite being a communist intelligence agent trained in Russia and who supported the invasion of Russian troops. Hats off to you,» he said, according to the PragueMorning portal.
Babis recalled that there is another president of a European country who was a «communist agent», Vladimir Putin.
Pavel has responded in statements to the CPA news agency that «we can expect a lot of lies». «I was not able to watch Babis’ press conference, but I have been told that it was a great bore,» said the former general, who chaired NATO’s Military Committee, the highest military body of the alliance.
Babis himself also belonged to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and is being prosecuted for having registered as an agent of the State Security, the feared secret police of the pro-Soviet regime.
Pavel and Babis will face each other in the second round of the Czech Republic’s presidential elections after respectively obtaining 35.23 percent and 35.17 percent of the vote in the first round, held between Friday and Saturday.
Both candidates will face each other in the second round, scheduled for January 27-28, two weeks from now, to find out who will succeed the current president, Milos Zeman, reports Radio Prague.
The third by number of votes was economist Danuse Nerudová, who won 13.92 percent support despite being considered one of the favorites. The fourth contender, Pavel Fischer, won 7 percent of the vote.
Nerudová, Fischer and also the prime minister, Petr Fiala, have already endorsed Pavel in view of the second round, an endorsement that could be decisive.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
