Babiš bombards ministers with chaotic ideas, lacking any plan or logic

In recent weeks, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has been bombarding his own government with a stream of spontaneous initiatives that are coordinated neither with coalition partners nor with his own ministers, nor with ANO's election programme. According to experts, there is no overarching strategy linking these proposals — only chaos.

His latest brainchild is an attempt to tackle the demographic crisis by paying out one million crowns for every second child born, along with a lifetime tax exemption for a third. Babiš announced the plan during his Sunday address, without discussing it beforehand with either his coalition partners or the relevant ministers.

Ministers learn of reforms from the news

Labour Minister Aleš Juchelka is reportedly already used to such surprises within his own ministry: Babiš recently dictated to him, in much the same fashion, a decision to cut unemployment benefits, and now the Motorists party is pushing for the return of the so-called sick-pay waiting period.

Experts point to an obvious contradiction here: handing out millions of crowns for having children is a distinctly left-leaning measure — and, as the experience of Poland and Hungary (a country Babiš himself frequently cites as an example) has shown, generous cash payouts have little effect on birth rates. Meanwhile, the other two proposals — cutting unemployment benefits and reinstating the sick-pay waiting period — are right-leaning measures that would hit precisely the voters ANO relies on: older people who struggle to find new jobs, and lower-income workers.

From school reform to retreat

Another example of this chaotic approach is the saga over funding for private and church-run schools. Worried about how his voters would react to a record budget deficit, the prime minister decided the state should no longer pay for children's education at such schools — let churches and private entrepreneurs foot the bill instead. But soon thousands of angry voters were calling and writing to him, and Education Minister Robert Plaga once again had to explain to his boss how the school funding system actually works. In the end, the prime minister backed down again, though the final outcome of this saga remains unclear.

According to sources, Plaga is one of the few members of the cabinet who tries to rein in Babiš's chaotic initiatives — and often succeeds, though at the cost of considerable time and energy. The prime minister's tendency toward hands-on micromanagement has always been one of his defining traits, but observers note that this tendency has only intensified in recent weeks — while the overwhelming majority of ministers still don't dare tell "the boss" to mind his own business and let the specialists do their jobs.

Source: seznamzpravy.cz