Czech opposition leader and former Prime Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) contacted colleagues over the weekend to request sensitive information about Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky (Pirates), according to reports from Novinky.cz yesterday.
The reports referred to an email conversation which Babis accidentally sent to another recipient.
Babis told the server that he was not seeking any compromising information, but documents from public sources in order to respond to Lipavsky’s statements.
He later apologised on Twitter (styled as ‘X’) for the vulgar language he had used about Lipavsky, but otherwise maintained that there was nothing wrong with his actions.
Babiš wrote that he considered the whole affair “absolute nonsense”. “Talking about some compromising material is ridiculous when these are things that can be publicly traced on the internet. I apologise to the minister for the vulgar word used in a private conversation,” Babiš said.
Lipavsky told CTK that he was disgusted by the content of the e-mails.
In a Sunday discussion programme broadcast by Czech Television, Lipavsky said that Babis is becoming a security threat to the Czech Republic due to his statements. Babis responded that he considers the Pirates a threat to Czech security and sovereignty.
Subsequently on Sunday, however, Babis wrote an email to some of his associates asking them to prepare documents about Lipavsky. “Make me a draft, a dossier on this bastard. Write me a story of Israel, how he left our people in the lurch, how he was in Doha, going everywhere, campaigning, postal vote,” he wrote. The email conversation also addressed media references to Lipavsky’s family.
One of the intended recipients of the email was Babis’s adviser Jan Rovensky. However, Babis confused Rovensky with his namesake, who is a member of the Environment and mining limits committee of the town of Litvinov for ANO, according to Novinky.cz. Rovensky said he had decided to make the correspondence public because of the references to Lipavsky’s family.
“In principle, I am reconciled to the fact that politicians collect compromising material on each other, even if I don’t like it,” Rovensky told the server. “But to drag the children and wives of their opponents into this crosses all bounds. It’s disgusting, and I think it’s in the public interest for people to know about it.”
Babis stated that he was not seeking compromising information, but was merely requesting documents for a planned speech in parliament about Lipavsky. “These are documents from public sources. I want to respond to his lies in the Chamber of Deputies and ask him a simple question – whether he would send his children to war. I wouldn’t. That’s why I was interested,” he said.
