Hundreds of thousands of people rallied in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, on Sunday demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister Andrej Babis.
The rally in Letna park was the culmination of a series of demonstrations in recent weeks against Babis, who is facing criminal investigations over alleged fraud and conflicts of interest, claims he vehemently denies.
Phone operator T-Mobile said its network usage analysis puts the number of participants at over 258,000. A police spokesman declined to give an estimate.
The total population of the Czech Republic is 10.7 million.
Waving Czech and European Union (EU) flags, the crowd chanted, "Resign, Resign" and "We've had enough."
"No Tolerance for Lies and Fraud," read a banner unrolled by the demonstrators.
Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis arrives at the European Union leaders summit to discuss Brexit, in Brussels, Belgium, April 10, 2019. /Reuters Photo
Babis, a billionaire businessman turned politician, is the second wealthiest Czech according to Forbes. He leads the ANO movement which remains the most popular party and has won the European Parliament elections with 21.18 percent of the votes and six parliamentary seats in May.
He also has enough backing in the Czech lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, where a no-confidence vote planned for Wednesday is likely to fail, according to local media.
The petition was signed by 66 MPs from opposition parties the Civic Democrats (ODS), Pirates, Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL), TOP 09, and Mayors and Independents (STAN) in reaction to the European Commission's (EC) draft audit report concerning Prime Minister Babis' conflict of interest.
The EC report, which was released by local media recently, said Babis faced a conflict of interest due to the EU subsidies paid to his former business empire Agrofert. Babis transferred the subsidies to trust funds in February 2017 to meet the amended conflict of interest law, but still has influence as the trust funds' main beneficiary. Also, as the PM, he can influence the distribution of EU subsidies, the report said.
Babis denied wrongdoing and accused the EU of trying to destabilize the Czech Republic.
(With input from Xinhua, Reuters)
(Cover: A demonstrator waves a Czech Republic flag during a protest rally demanding the resignation of Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis in Prague, Czech Republic, June 23, 2019. /Reuters Photo)