Czech PM is defeated in election day shock

The Czech Republic could be in line for a change of government after Prime Minister Andrej Babis's ANO Party suffered a shock defeat in the country's general election.

Since 2017, Babis has led a minority coalition government of ANO and the Social Democrats, but after the polls closed, it emerged that the three-party Together coalition had won 27.8 percent of the vote, ahead of ANO's 27.1 percent.

However, what happens next is not yet entirely clear, as Babis, who publicly accepted defeat but also called the result "excellent", could still end up being prime minister again.

In the ordinary course of events, the leader of the strongest party is invited to form a new government, and although he has not commented yet, previously President Milos Zeman has indicated that he would prefer that to be the leader of the winning party, rather than a winning coalition.

"We're the strongest party," said Babis. "If the president asks me to create a government, I'll open the negotiations about it."

However, Zeman was rushed to the hospital on Sunday, a day after the parliamentary election, according to an AP report. It is not yet clear how the 77-year-old president's hospitalization will affect the forming of the next government, it said.

The Czech Republic is one half of the former Czechoslovakia, and in a significant moment in national history, at this election, both the Communists and Social Democrats failed to win a seat for the first time since the peaceful so-called Velvet Divorce from Slovakia in 1993.

The country has a population of around 10.7 million and is a member of both NATO and the European Union, but during the campaign, Babis spoke of his opposition to the country accepting migrants and the EU's Green Deal, and even talked of trying to abolish the European Parliament.

German news website DW reported that the Czech police have recommended Babis should be indicted on fraud charges relating to EU subsidies and his former business empire, and he has also been widely criticized for his handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Data from Johns Hopkins University shows that the country has recorded 1.7 million cases and more than 30,000 deaths, which, in per head of population terms, works out as the seventh highest death rate of any country in the world.

In the run-up to the election, Babis's name was prominent in the Pandora Papers, the huge leak of financial documents relating to off shore companies around the world, which suggested he had failed to declare using an off shore investment company to spend 12 million pounds ($16.3 million) on buying two villas in the south of France.

Babis insisted he had "never done anything wrong or illegal" and claimed the allegations were an attempt to affect the outcome of the election.