Mogul Czech PM says will reject offer to continue

PRAGUE: Billionaire Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, whose populist ANO party narrowly lost a general election last weekend, on Friday said he would reject an offer to continue and was heading into opposition.

The move gives room to Petr Fiala, the head of the centre-right three-party Together alliance which edged ANO in the vote, to take up the top government job.

Together has a parliamentary majority of 108 seats in the 200-seat lower house in a coalition with another alliance of two centrist parties.

"We will hand it over to the new coalition and head into opposition," Babis told the Frekvence 1 radio station.

The two alliances already started to work on the next government earlier this week. It is up to the country’s President Milos Zeman to tap someone to form the new government.

But Zeman has been in intensive care in a Prague hospital since Sunday with an unspecified problem likely requiring a longer stay there.