ANO MP Margita Balastikova has suspended her membership of the party with immediate effect, following reports that she ordered the killing of her ex-husband’s partner’s dog in 2023. She announced her resignation on Facebook today, and said she intends to fight to clear her name. Balastikova will also be removed from ANO’s candidate list for the October parliamentary elections, ANO leader Andrej Babis said earlier.
Balastikova claims that the recordings of her controversial statements, as reported by Seznam Zpravy, are manipulated. She added that the timing of the scandal is related to the upcoming elections, and a sign that it is an attempt to damage ANO.
“I really do not want to harm the ANO movement and I will not, which is why I have decided to suspend my membership with immediate effect,” she wrote. She also said that in the last few years of her marriage she had been subjected to psychological terror, threats, and beatings.
In one of the recordings, Balastikova said she wished to use her contacts in the Zlin health inspectorate to harm ChemProgres, a manufacturer of cleaning products for farmers of which her ex-husband is managing director. In the recording, Seznam Zpravy writes, Balastikova plans to “pin down” her former husband’s company and tasks the director of the Zlin public health office, Eva Sedlackova, with doing so.
Zlin public health workers have rejected the accusations, and Balastikova said she had no reason to take revenge on her husband for the divorce. Police are investigating the case.
On another recording, the report said, Balastikova ordered the killing of a dog that evidently belonged to the new partner of her ex-husband Josef Balastik, whom she was divorcing in a stormy atmosphere two years ago.
The recordings were made secretly by Josef Balastik in their family home in the summer of 2023, in order to provide evidence of conflicts linked to their ongoing divorce proceedings. It was also Balastik who handed the recordings to journalists recently, Seznam Zpravy’s Vojtech Blazek told Czech Television today, adding that Balastikova had several opportunities to comment on them.
Balastikova previously filed a criminal complaint over the secret recordings, but it was shelved by police last July.
Blazek said that Balastik had contacted journalists with the recordings because his company had lodged a complaint with police several months ago, but it was unclear what they were doing as they had neither conducted interviews nor requested any documents.
According to Seznam Zpravy, the complaint included expert opinions testifying that it was Balastikova speaking on the recordings.
CTK contacted Balastik today, but he referred to his attorney and did not want to comment on the case.
“The injured company contacted the police in February, but the checks are continuing. Therefore, in order to protect my client’s rights, I have contacted journalists to consider whether to inform the public about the case,” said Michal Pokorny of the law firm SHIELDS, which represents ChemProgres.
Balastikova herself said that she had never contacted anyone about the killing of a dog, and that the recording as reported was fake, adding that she would be defending herself.
“This is a classic example of an article written to order – without verifying the facts,” she wrote. “If it is true that the police are looking into the issue, which I do not know yet, I expect to learn what I allegedly said.
Balastikova, who was also ANO’s shadow agriculture minister, has been an MP since 2013. In the elections, she was listed in second place on ANO’s candidate list in the Zlin Region.
ANO is the long-standing clear favourite of the general election due on October 3-4.
Prior to her resignation today, Babis told CTK that the allegations against Balastikova were “absolutely unacceptable”, and he could not imagine that a person would be capable of such a thing.
Political analysts who spoke to CTK agreed that keeping Balastikova on the ANO candidate list amid the current scandal was unsustainable, and Babis’s decision to withdraw her is intended to meet voters’ demands for decisive and competent behaviour from politicians. Thanks to this quick reaction, the affair is unlikely to fundamentally damage ANO in the election, according to Ales Michal of Charles University’s Faculty of Social Sciences and Milan Skolnik of the University of Life Sciences’ Faculty of Economics and Business Administration in Prague.
