If ANO's Jaroslav Faltynek and his party colleagues in parliament were lobbyists, they would be out of business by now.



The executive and legislative branches of government working seamlessly together.

Since his boss came to power in January, ANO 2011's Jaroslav Faltynek has tried and failed twice to persuade parliament to adopt legislation that would boost Agrofert’s profits at the expense of its competitors.

In March this year, Agrofert suffered a humiliating setback in parliament when its proposal to reintroduce public subsidies for new biogas installations was rejected by the lower house’s agriculture committee. Only ANO 2011 MPs voted for the measure, proposed by Faltynek, who of course chairs the committee. Agrofert owns eight biogas installations. In 2012, it bought Farmtec, which builds them. Between 2012-2013, Farmtec built 70 biogas installations. Thanks to the disappearance of subsidies, Farmtec has failed to secure a single order so far this year.

The second failure happened last week. The lower house threw out a surreptitious proposal, formally tabled by KSCM with the full support of ANO 2011, to exclude dominant suppliers, such as Agrofert’s bakeries, from the law governing the abuse of market power by retail chains and suppliers. The ‘Rohlik Coalition’ was made up of ANO 2011, KSCM and six CSSD MPs close to Michal Hasek.

In both instances, ANO 2011 failed to secure the backing of its coalition partners. And in both cases, neither of Agrofert’s national newspapers, in either print or electronic format, reported the failure.

What does this tell us?

Firstly, that Babis has no hesitation in using his parliamentary power to promote Agrofert’s exclusive business interests. Secondly, that Jaroslav Faltynek, however brilliant a manager he might be, is a crappy parliamentarian.

Thirdly, the failure of media owned by Agrofert to report failed attempts to change the law in ways that would benefit their owner shows that, in the case of Mlada fronta Dnes and Lidove noviny, bad news for Agrofert is not news at all.

And lastly, the biogas and ‘rohlik’ failures show that parliament is acting as an essential restraint on Andrej Babis and his formidable executive power. For the moment, he is simply unable to impose his will on parliament in matters that are of obvious benefit to his business conglomerate.

In short, these two examples demonstrate that Andrej Babis is willing and able to exploit his power in government and the media to benefit Agrofert, but that when it comes to parliament, he lacks the votes to do so effectively.

Let us hope that the electorate keeps it this way.