PRAGUE — Czech President Miloš Zeman was rushed to hospital Sunday, a day after parliamentary elections in which Prime Minister Andrej Babiš suffered a surprise defeat.
Zeman’s personal physician, Miroslav Zavoral, told journalists in Prague that Zeman was in intensive care being treated for a chronic illness, but he refused to name the ailment or specify the president’s condition.
“We know the diagnosis, but I do not want it published,†he said.
Zeman, 77, has been suffering from a number of ailments for years, and has often appeared in public in a wheelchair.
His hospitalization followed a meeting at his official residence with Babiš, whose ANO party came second in the two-day election.
With all the votes counted, Babiš’s ANO finished with 27.12 percent of the vote, trailing the three-party Together coalition, which received 27.79 percent.
According to a survey by the Kantar research agency, the publication of the so-called Pandora Papers may have been instrumental in Babiš’s defeat. The poll found that 8 percent of ANO supporters voted for a different party because of the revelations. That is significant because Babiš lost the election by less than 36,000 votes.
The Pandora leak revealed that he had used shell companies to buy property and a chateau on the French Riviera in 2009.
Babiš was also unpopular with voters in Prague, where the Together coalition defeated ANO by more than 140,000 votes.
Late Saturday, the leaders of Together and the Pirate/STAN coalition — which finished third in the voting — agreed to form a new government, with the head of Together, Petr Fiala, as prime minister. Such a government, which would comprise five parties, would enjoy a comfortable majority of 108 MPs in the 200-seat Chamber of Deputies.
The two groupings on Saturday also asked Zeman to instruct Fiala to form a new government, with Fiala saying that they would not enter into negotiations with any other parties.
However, Zeman has said in the past that he would instruct the leader of the winning party to form the new government because he considered election coalitions to be a “scamâ€. Babiš’s ANO received the highest number of votes of any individual party.
The president still has time to appoint a prime minister, and the present government is entitled to stay in power until the convening of the new Chamber of Deputies, no later than 30 days after the election.
But Zeman’s condition has left the formation of a new government in limbo, and it may be some time before the picture becomes clear.
