Far-right Czech party whose half-Japanese founder urged voters to walk pigs near mosques scores surprise election success
Born to a Czech mother and Japanese father, Tomio Okamura grew up in both the Czech Republic and Japan – but he was not always on the extreme right
A far-right party whose leader wants to quit the EU and urged Czechs to walk pigs near mosques and stop eating kebabs, performed surprisingly well in an election, potentially giving it a chance to influence how the next government is formed.
The Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party rode a wave of far-right sentiment in Europe in an election that ravaged the more established political parties and looked set to hand power to maverick tycoon Andrej Babis.
The SPD was set up in 2015 by Tomio Okamura, a half-Japanese entrepreneur who made his name by creating an offbeat travel agency for cuddly toys before entering politics.
“We want to stop any Islamisation of the Czech Republic, we push for zero tolerance of migration,” Okamura told reporters after his party won just under 10.7 per cent of the vote, almost neck-and-neck with two other parties who were runners-up to Babis’s ANO party.
Okamura was first elected to the lower house for the Dawn party, which fought to install direct voting for most political posts and won 6.9 per cent in the 2013 election, He was later ousted in a spat over irregularities in party finances.
