Election: Former General Beats Billionaire in Czech Republic Presidential Election

In the first round of the Czech presidential election, retired army general Petr Pavel narrowly defeated populist billionaire Andrej Babis, setting up a run-off vote between the political outsider and the former prime minister.

No one of the eight contenders for the mostly ceremonial presidency of the country obtained a majority of the votes in the first round of voting, which was held on Friday and Saturday, therefore Mr. Pavel and Mr. Babis moved on to the second round.

The Czech statistics office has completed counting the ballots from 99.9% of the polling places, and Mr. Pavel received 35.39% of the vote to Babis’ 35.00%.

“It’s such a close result that I can already see the hard work for us ahead of the second round,” Mr. Pavel said. “Every vote will count.”

Mr. Pavel served as the previous chairman of the military committee of NATO, the organization’s top military body. He wholeheartedly endorsed the nation’s military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia and saw a connection between the Czech Republic’s future and NATO and the EU membership.

Mr. Babis expressed his happiness with the outcome, which was higher than the 27.1% his centrist ANO (Yes) movement garnered in the general election of 2021.

It’s fantastic, he declared.

After congratulating Mr. Pavel on his triumph, Mr. Babis launched an attack against his rival. He emphasized Mr. Pavel’s past as a soldier and a Communist Party member, saying, “I don’t understand why he’s running.”

However, the Slovakian-born man is accused of collaborating with the secret police during the communist era in his own country and was a member of the Communist Party before the 1989 Velvet Revolution that established democracy.

Danuse Nerudova, another opponent of Mr. Babis who served as rector of Mendel University in Brno, came in third place with 13.9%, while conservative former diplomat Pavel Fischer came in fourth place with 6.8%.

Nerudova and Fischer both vowed to back Mr. Pavel in the next run-off.

The second and final term of Milos Zeman, who is being replaced, expires in March. The voter turnout was 68.2%, which was higher than the 61.9% in the 2018 election.

One of the chief duties of the Czech president, according to the constitution, is to choose the prime minister following a general election.

With the support of the upper house of Parliament, the president also chooses justices for the Constitutional Court and members of the Central Bank board.

Otherwise, the president has limited executive authority because the prime minister selects and heads the administration that governs the nation. This week’s fraud trial resulted in Babis, 68, being declared innocent, improving his prospects of winning the election.