Election-winner Andrej Babis went to Prague Castle on Wednesday to present President Petr Pavel with his list of cabinet nominees.
They included Filip Turek, the candidate for the post of Czech environment minister put forward by the euroskeptic Motorists for Themselves party, one of Mr. Babis’s two coalition allies.
Mr. Turek, an ex-racing driver, has faced intense media scrutiny over allegedly racist, sexist and homophobic Facebook posts, several Hitler salutes, and an incident involving a Saudi diplomat and a spent ammunition cartridge.
The Motorists originally put him forward for the post of foreign minister, and party leader Petr Macinka as environment minister. However, a last-minute change on Wednesday morning saw the names reversed.
But even this was not enough to satisfy the president.
“The president’s position is that he doesn’t think Mr. Turek should be in the cabinet,” Andrej Babis told reporters after his latest meeting with Mr. Pavel.
“I’ll now go back to speak to the Motorists party and we’ll decide how to proceed,” said Mr. Babis, adding that President Pavel would speak to all ministerial candidates over the next two weeks.
A flurry of snowflakes fell on the bank of microphones in the courtyard of Prague Castle as Mr. Babis explained what would happen in the month leading up to Christmas — by which time he hopes to be named prime minister.
Festive cheer is in short supply, however.
Mr. Turek’s difficulties began when the daily newspaper Denik N published a series of screenshots it said were deleted posts and comments harvested from his Facebook account.
In 2010, when a group of neo-Nazi sympathizers were given long prison sentences for an arson attack on a house inhabited by a Roma family in which a two-year-old girl was badly burned, Turek allegedly wrote there should have been ‘extenuating circumstances’ as the family was Roma.
In 2015, claimed Denik N, Turek appears to have used the N-word in reference to US President Barack Obama and later allegedly referred to an Afro-American area of Los Angeles as “Planet of the Apes.”
A few years later, when Munich City Council asked permission to illuminate the Allianz Arena in rainbow colors during Euro 2020 as a show of support for sexual minorities, Turek allegedly shared a post on the story with the comment “it seems the last proud German died in 1945.”
The list went on.
Denik N claimed there were numerous posts by Turek in which he referred to himself as “Vudce” (the Czech word for Führer) as well as “Duce,” and his Prague apartment as the “Eagle’s Nest” (a reference to Hitler’s mountain retreat in Bavaria).
Turek categorically denies accusations he is a racist or Nazi sympathizer.
Originally describing the Denik N story as a hit job by a hostile media, he later denied writing some of the deleted comments outright and asked for proof. Others he described as his brand of “black humor.” Some, he said, were the result of lending someone his phone in a bar.
Mr. Turek similarly dismissed several photos of himself performing the Nazi salute as a joke, and not meant seriously.
Most, however, agree that Turek, who boasts a collection of luxury cars and has a visceral aversion to the EU’s Green Deal, is hardly a good fit for environment minister.
“Above all, Filip Turek himself would not enjoy being at the Environment Ministry,” said Jindrich Sidlo, a well-known Czech journalist and political commentator.
“It’s not what he dreamed of — travelling the world, feeling that he belongs to high society and taking part in shaping history,” Sidlo told DW. “I wouldn’t be surprised if ultimately he reconsiders his nomination.”
President Pavel has previously made it known that Filip Turek’s unacceptable comments were the main stumbling block to his appointment.
However, Turek has also admitted placing a spent rifle cartridge and a drawing of a gallows on the roof of a car belonging to an employee of the Saudi Embassy after an altercation. He claimed the man had been harassing his girlfriend.
Eagle-eyed journalists, meanwhile, spotted that the notes Babis was carrying on Wednesday suggested the president also had problems with Turek admitting to speeding on a Czech motorway at 200 kilometers per hour (124 miles per hour), allegedly failing to declare €3 million ($3.47 million) in property and claims he had built a garage without planning permission.
Some, however, point out that the Czech constitution does not give President Pavel much room to maneuver once Mr. Babis has been formally named prime minister.
“Until now, there has been consensus among constitutional lawyers and politicians that the president may express his wishes and preferences, but he must accept a candidate who has been officially proposed by the prime minister,” said journalist Petr Kambersky, a commentator for Lidove noviny newspaper.
“The government is formed as a result of parliamentary elections, and is accountable to parliament,” Kambersky told DW, adding that the Czech president, although directly elected by the people, has no authority to decide on the government or its policies.
Throughout the scandal, the Motorists have insisted that they will walk away if Mr. Turek is not allowed to join the government.
Observers say, however, that they are unlikely to go through with that threat.
But it certainly piles the pressure on Andrej Babis, who faces a separate struggle with President Pavel over his as-yet unresolved conflict of interest.
