The ageing prime minister fights against time and an elite conspiracy.
If there is something Andrej Babiš pursues with real passion alongside running the government, it is controlling his own body. Ministers are increasingly witnessing this when he tells them he “wants to be here until 120”, while at the same time demonstrating in front of them everything he is doing to achieve that. Most recently, he told his colleagues how he had bought, for 21,000 Czech crowns (€867) , a six‑month supply of injections to lower cholesterol.
He does not hide his ambition to be here “forever” even from the public. “My biggest goal is to win the elections in 2029, 2033 and 2037. So, we have big goals,” Babiš said recently on his show Sorry jako. If he managed that, in 2037 he could be prime minister at the age of 82 (even now, at 71 he is, incidentally, the oldest head of government since the creation of Czechoslovakia). Babiš apparently wants to make his mark on history, and his grand plans are shared by people who are currently moving in his immediate circle.
A slightly better place in the world
Visitors to local medical congresses devoted to treating serious illnesses or to a healthy lifestyle can look forward to the repeated presence of a prestigious guest. It is Babiš who always likes to drop in among them, taking notes on healthy approaches to the body and writing down the names of various cutting-edge devices for treating serious diseases such as cancer.
He then seeks more information about them from leading experts in the field in one‑to‑one conversations, so that he can later list them during discussions with voters as well as in media appearances, together with recommendations for preventive check‑ups – at least until some other breakthrough of modern medicine catches his attention. Babiš simply talks a lot, and with enthusiasm, about health and how to look after it. His thoughts are increasingly turning towards longevity.
He tries to achieve it through regular exercise and drinking healthy herbal beverages, and he monitors his fitness on a smartwatch (it helps him adjust his workouts and keep an eye on his diet). After he returned to the prime minister’s chair for the second time last December, he had a “traffic light” system for meals introduced at the Office of the Government – dishes at the serving counter that are less healthy are marked in red, the most balanced ones in green.
When, in April, the prime minister slipped away for a few days of an exotic holiday in the Maldives, he showed off in one of his videos a book titled Young Forever by the leading promoter of longevity Dr Mark Hyman. Its motto is the assumption that biological age is not fixed, and that with the help of diet, lifestyle and modern scientific knowledge death can be significantly postponed.
“And what is terribly important, and what I did not know, is to find meaning and a life mission,” said the cheerful, tanned politician in shorts in the video, leafing through the book. “And one of the points is: cultivate altruism and help others. Watch out, the brain reacts to good deeds just as strongly as to, say, cocaine or heroin. But kindness, unlike drugs, is beneficial and safe. Get involved in the effort to make the world a slightly better place.”
People who encounter Babiš in closed working meetings mostly paint a completely different picture from the one the prime minister tries to project in public. Kindness is absent there; what prevails is gloom, accusations of laziness or corruption, harshness and insults. When Babiš was dissatisfied a few days ago with the proposed concept for the army, he showered defence minister Jaromír Zůna and the generals present with curses such as “have you fucking shit yourselves in the cinema”.
It is nothing new. Those who have experience with Babiš from earlier times, however, say that he has now added a new communication twist to his style. “We were sitting in some meeting, the prime minister walked through the door and started shouting at us that we were the deep state,” one participant in the official meeting with the prime minister recalling the change. Similar outbursts by Babiš are becoming more frequent and are setting the direction of what his politics will be about.
Hunting down every enemy
The fact is that while during his first term as prime minister Babiš’s favourite verbal attack was the label “post‑November cartel” – this was how he referred to post‑1989 political parties and their corruption scandals – when he returned to power last year after four years spent in opposition, his thinking shifted into a more conspiratorial register.
“Of course, that is the Czech deep state. It includes various commentators, journalists, NGOs, officials and other public figures,” Babiš told Parlamentní listy in March, adding that he was facing a “well‑organised opponent”.
By this, the prime minister meant a kind of dark cabal and the suspicion that the state operates according to a theory made famous in recent years, above all by US president Donald Trump. In this view, it is not elected politicians who decide what happens, but some mysterious entity in the background quietly preparing his supposed downfall.
After Respekt asked the prime minister in March whether he could clarify his concept of the “deep state”, Babiš replied: “You are part of it as well, the Respekt sect!” The politician thus did not elaborate much on this explosive topic, but from the available information it follows that in his current interpretation it is no longer just about post‑1989 political parties. Today he labels as the enemy a very broad “conspiracy” of NGOs, the opposition, journalists, officials and critics of the government.
“He sees them as a threat to himself and his plans, which is why he started looking for ways to weaken this part of civil society,” said a source from the Office of the Government. For that reason, Babiš created a special position in his advisory team, to which he appointed Natálie Vachatová, an analyst from the Society for the Defence of Freedom of Speech [Společnost pro obranu svobody projevu, SOSP].
“I took her on because she understands this deep state, she understands those NGOs, she uncovered how money flows from abroad,” the prime minister declared in February, when he defended his adviser as her uncritical stance towards authoritarian Russia was being publicly debated.
Vachatová is problematic not only because she plays down the Russian threat, but also because of her unmistakable ambition to hunt for enemies around herself and the prime minister and to try to cut them off from public funds, even though they may be working in the public interest. This activity risks shattering the fragile ecosystem of cooperation between ministries, the state administration, and the civic and non-profit sectors that has been painstakingly built up over decades, in which various actors laboriously negotiate compromises from which, in the end, most of society benefits in some way.
In Babiš’s current world, civil society and the non-profit sector are critically disposed towards him; their representatives are expressing disagreement with the prime minister’s management of the country more loudly than ever before through demonstrations. They object to his bringing the pro-Russian SPD and the foul-mouthed Motorists into government, to the government making assistance to Ukraine more difficult, seeking to bind public service media, or engaging in unsystematic manoeuvring with the human-rights agenda at the Office of the Government.
They criticise his conflict of interest – the European Union has told the government that until this is resolved, the country should not submit for reimbursement any subsidies linked to the prime minister – and also the fact that he keeps in office a minister for regional development discredited by local scandals. And all this is becoming a burden on his governance.
