PRAGUE: Social Democrats edged out a new populist party to win Czech elections on Saturday as voters angered by years of right-wing graft and austerity veered left, full results showed.
However, the fragmented outcome of the two-day ballot leaves few options for a stable majority government, analysts warned, and the parties will have to embark upon coalition talks.
Social Democrats scored a hollow victory with 20.4 percent of the vote, just 1.8 percentage points more than the ANO party led by billionaire Andrej Babis.
Coming in runner-up has cast the second wealthiest Czech as a powerbroker on the EU member's chaotic political scene.
Pre-election surveys had tipped the Communists to play that role, but a weak third spot finish with under 15 percent leaves them all but out of the running.
Sending mixed messages on Saturday, Babis first said ANO "won't support a cabinet comprising" the Social Democrats but later admitted he would be ready to talk about joining the left-wingers in government.
"The most likely coalition is the Social Democrats with the Christian Democrats, backed by ANO," Jan Outly, an analyst at Prague's Metropolitan University, told AFP.
Together the three parties could control 111 seats in the 200-seat parliament.
The election had been called eight months early after a spy and bribery scandal brought down the centre-right government of Petr Necas in June and launched the political scene into turmoil.
Tipped as the new premier, Social Democrat leader Bohuslav Sobotka was disappointed by the outcome but said he was ready to begin coalition talks with all parties, including the small centrist Christian Democrats who scored just seven percent.
Before the vote he hinted at forming a minority government with the tacit support of the Communists.
The pro-EU 42-year-old has vowed to keep the public deficit under three percent of gross domestic product but wants to boost revenue by hiking taxes on utilities, telecoms, banks and the wealthy.
Coalition governments lacking comfortable majorities are the norm here, with smaller parties or independent MPs often wooed for support.
Voters already swung left in January, electing former Communist Milos Zeman as president after a decade under the right-wing and eurosceptic Vaclav Klaus.
The Social Democrats were last in power in 2006.
Tycoon means business
Right-wing parties hit by Necas's fall from grace fared poorly Saturday but all managed to jump a five-percent hurdle to enter parliament. Turnout topped 59 percent.
Many Czechs had been outraged by the prospect of the far-left gaining political ground for the first time since the Velvet Revolution two decades ago.
Anti-communists hoisted a massive banner of Russian President Vladimir Putin dressed as Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin atop a hill in central Prague on Friday.
Rockers held anti-communist concerts, while rebel artist David Cerny gave Zeman the finger a huge purple one floating along the river before the presidential castle over his soft spot for the Communists.
Babis, a Slovak-born farming tycoon and media mogul, capitalised on the blow dealt to the right by the bribery scandal to catapult his party from nowhere to number two.
Claiming his billions make him immune to bribery, he wooed voters with vows of squeaky clean politics and prosperity.
Babis reinvented US President Barack Obama's "Yes We Can" campaign slogan, promising Czechs "Yes, We'll Be Better Off" with a politician who knows how to make money.
But he has also called for higher tariffs on food imports, which critics say can only benefit his mainly farm-based businesses.
A legacy of four decades of totalitarian rule, corruption has plagued the EU member of 10.5 million people since its 1993 split with Slovakia.
Transparency International ranks the Czech Republic as more corrupt than Rwanda and a recent Gallup Institute survey showed 94 percent of Czechs believe graft is "widespread in government".
"Why would someone who manages a large company not be able to manage a small country? You've got my YES," ANO voter Filip Dusek said on the party's Facebook page.
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