The Czech centre-left coalition weakened Friday as a popular junior partner threatened to quit over a planned police reform, raising the spectre of an early election more than a year ahead of schedule.
The centrist ANO party led by billionaire Finance Minister Andrej Babis blasted a controversial proposed reform that would merge police units fighting economic and organised crime.
The Czech Republic's second richest man argues the move would make it more difficult to fight rampant corruption in the EU country of 10.5 million people.
Babis said the reforms would cause "irreversible damage to the police" adding that as ANO "we refuse to bear this political responsibility" in an open letter to Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka published on Friday.
Sobotka, a social democrat, hit back at what he termed an "attempt by ANO to politicise and destabilise the work of the police" in an emailed statement Friday.
The uneasy coalition partners are expected to meet next Wednesday.
An opinion poll published last week showed the Babis's centrists beating Sobotka's CSSD Social Democrats.
A survey by the TNS Aisa pollsters showed ANO scoring 66 of the 200 seats in parliament, compared to just 50 for the prime minister's social democrats.
Both parties face regional and senate elections in October, while the next regularly scheduled general election is expected in October 2017.
A legacy of four decades of totalitarian rule, corruption has plagued the Czech Republic since its 1993 split with Slovakia.
A self-made farm products mogul worth $2 billion, Babis, 61, has wooed voters with promises of prosperity and by insisting his money makes him immune to the graft permeating Czech politics.
In late 2013 he burst out of nowhere with ANO, or the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens, to win a surprise second spot in a snap election just 1.8 percentage points behind Sobotka's Social Democrats.
This year, Babis has repeatedly threatened to pull the plug on his coalition with Sobotka.
The Czech centre-left coalition weakened Friday as a popular junior partner threatened to quit over a planned police reform, raising the spectre of an early election more than a year ahead of schedule.
The centrist ANO party led by billionaire Finance Minister Andrej Babis blasted a controversial proposed reform that would merge police units fighting economic and organised crime.
The Czech Republic’s second richest man argues the move would make it more difficult to fight rampant corruption in the EU country of 10.5 million people.
Babis said the reforms would cause “irreversible damage to the police” adding that as ANO “we refuse to bear this political responsibility” in an open letter to Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka published on Friday.
Sobotka, a social democrat, hit back at what he termed an “attempt by ANO to politicise and destabilise the work of the police” in an emailed statement Friday.
The uneasy coalition partners are expected to meet next Wednesday.
An opinion poll published last week showed the Babis’s centrists beating Sobotka’s CSSD Social Democrats.
A survey by the TNS Aisa pollsters showed ANO scoring 66 of the 200 seats in parliament, compared to just 50 for the prime minister’s social democrats.
Both parties face regional and senate elections in October, while the next regularly scheduled general election is expected in October 2017.
A legacy of four decades of totalitarian rule, corruption has plagued the Czech Republic since its 1993 split with Slovakia.
A self-made farm products mogul worth $2 billion, Babis, 61, has wooed voters with promises of prosperity and by insisting his money makes him immune to the graft permeating Czech politics.
In late 2013 he burst out of nowhere with ANO, or the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens, to win a surprise second spot in a snap election just 1.8 percentage points behind Sobotka’s Social Democrats.
This year, Babis has repeatedly threatened to pull the plug on his coalition with Sobotka.
