Final Word from Tuesday, October 16, 2018

When Chair Andrej Babiš of ANO, still as finance minister, played Louis XIV with the Financial Times in Feb. 2016 ("The party is connected to my person. The party is me."), it was talked about for days. Such an admission on the international level of the control of one person over a leading political party of a democratic country was remarkable. Yet people soon got used to the bravado, so when Babiš told MFD on Oct. 4 that "the government is me," few thought twice about it. He said specifically that he "cannot imagine that Mr. [Tomáš] Petříček would have views other than those of the government, meaning other than I have." Two days later, Petříček told MFD that "the foreign ministry creates our foreign policy." He went on to say that he doesn't see this as a contest between him and Babiš, but someone in his vicinity clearly does. Petříček will become foreign minister at 11:30am today. Starting this afternoon we'll see who the real Louis XIV of Czech foreign policy is. [ Czech Republic France affairs ]