“How long will the expropriation process take?” asked Babiša’s wife. “Jesus Christ, I don’t know how,” replied the prime minister. For that, he received a reprimand from the interviewer: “You should know that. You came here for this meeting with local residents and you came unprepared.” Babiš just laughed in response and said that he was amused.
However, he could not answer the question. He only said that there is no court and therefore he cannot know.
“Okay. I didn’t get an answer. Thank you,” the woman ended her verbal exchange with the prime minister. (A shortened version of the dialogue is presented at the top of the article, a longer version can be viewed at the end of it. You can find the unedited recording of the entire debate here – editor’s note)
The debate took place on Wednesday in the early evening at a brewery in the Ostrava part of Heřmanice. The only topic of the meeting with the citizens was the topic of the Hermanic dump, which threatens the environment and has been discussed for years. Originally, representatives of the state enterprise Diamo and the Health Institute in Ostrava were supposed to participate in the discussion. “We only learned the evening before the meeting that the prime minister would also arrive,” a woman who did not want to disclose her name explained to Fairpress.
It was she who became the heroine of the approximately one-hour debate with the prime minister, who, however, spent some time on the phone instead of dialoguing with the citizens. She was not satisfied with Babiš’s non-specific answers or the story of how he saved OKD.
“There were more questions before that. He didn’t want to answer any of them, he was constantly trying to make excuses, he was giggling, laughing and constantly directing the flow of information somewhere else,” the resident of Ostrava described, adding that her reprimand towards the prime minister was the magic of the unwanted. “The way he behaved pissed me off and I lost it,” admitted the woman, who also gave Babis a small lesson in polite behavior when she asked him not to jump into her conversation all the time.
For this, she received recognition not only from the participants in the hall, but also from those who watched the debate on the Facebook of the Silesian people movement, which organized the meeting.
In a heap debate, don’t ask about the heap
“I noticed a lot of reactions that surprised me. I don’t think it would be that special,” the woman smiled. “Many people are congratulating me, telling me that they are holding their fists. At the same time, it was just a reaction to the situation or the behavior of the Prime Minister,” she repeated.
Photo: Denisa Doležalová, Fairpress
Andrej Babiš debates with people about the problematic dump in Heřmanice.
In addition, Babiš embarrassed most of the participants in the discussion right after entering the hall. He introduced himself with the statement: “Us (he came to the meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Karel Havlíček and Minister Aleš Juchelka – author’s note) you can ask anything except the heap. The director of Diam is here in a heap,” he referred to the head of the company, Ludvík Kašpar. People did not understand why he was there.
At the same time, before the elections, in July of last year, Babiš published a video via the X network, in which he sits in front of a pile and talks intimately about this issue. He promises, for example, that if he is elected, he will look for a solution for which the state will pay the minimum or nothing at all.
Debate on the Heřmanické heap in Ostrava with BabišVideo: Silesian people
