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Petr Fiala: top candidate of the opposition alliance Spolu (joint)
Photo: Darko Bandic / AP
The Czech center-right opposition group Spolu (Joint) overtook Prime Minister Andrej Babiš's ruling party ANO in the parliamentary elections, as the almost complete election results show.
With another opposition alliance, they surprisingly achieved a majority.
After counting almost 99 percent of the votes cast, they came together to 108 of the 200 seats in the House of Representatives.
According to the interim results, Spolu (together) has 27.6 percent of the vote, the alliance of the pirate and mayor parties 15.5 percent.
"The change is here, we are the change," said Spolu top candidate Petr Fiala.
The head of the opposition Pirates Party, Ivan Bartos, announced talks about the formation of a new government.
The ANO of Prime Minister Babiš is in an exciting head-to-head race with Spolu for first place until the end, but according to the latest figures it is only 27.3 percent.
Babiš had been caught up in a financial affair in the last few feet of the election campaign.
According to research by an international network of journalists, he is said to have bought real estate in France through foreign letterbox companies in 2009.
A stalemate looms after the election.
President Miloš Zeman has stressed several times in the past that he would not give government mandate to an electoral alliance, but to the strongest individual party.
In any case, that would be Babiš's populist ANO, as Spolu consists of the three parties ODS, TOP09 and KDU-CSL.
77-year-old Zeman makes no secret of his support for Babiš.
bbr / dpa / Reuters
