Image copyright EPA Image caption Milos Zeman has won a second five-year term in office

Czech President Milos Zeman has won a second term in office following a tight run-off vote against rival Jiri Drahos. With ballots from almost 99 percent of polling stations counted, the Czech Statistics Office said President Milos Zeman had received 51.6 percent of the vote during the two-day runoff election. The low-key former head of the Czech Academy of Sciences had campaigned on a platform of robust support for the European Union and a more civil approach to politics. "For me, the president is a representative personality first of all, and he (Drahos) would be good at that," said office worker Drahomira Cerna. Zeman declared support for U.S. President Donald Trump before Trump's election in 2016, a rare position among leaders in Europe. – The populist, pro-Russian president of the Czech Republic fended off a vigorous challenge from a pro-European Union political neophyte Saturday in an election widely seen as a referendum on whether the central European nation will tilt East or West. "This is my last political victory, there will be no political defeats," he told the crowd, flanked by advisers and the leaders of the far-right, anti-EU and anti-NATO SPD party and the Social Democrat party that he once led. The result will also influence the formation of the next Czech government, with Zeman one of the few political backers of Prime Minister Andrej Babis, whose minority cabinet lost a confidence vote this month due to fraud allegations hanging over the billionaire businessman. Speaking to a jubilant crowd at his Prague campaign headquarters, a jovial Zeman vowed to give political ally Babis plenty of time to cobble together a government. He can appoint the prime minister and government, central bank board members, judges and university professors, and sign bills passed by parliament into laws. The president has the power to veto laws and appoint a prime minister, a particularly important role now given that the country has been locked in political paralysis since October parliamentary elections. Many see the vote as a referendum on the incumbent Zeman, 73, a former centre-left prime minister who has shifted sharply to the right, with a brash style that has divided the EU nation.
Incumbent Miloš Zeman, who opposes immigration and objects to EU sanctions against Russia, is elected to a second term as President of the Czech Republic, after receiving 51.8 percent of the votes in the run-off election over pro-EU challenger Jiří Drahoš.