CZECH President Milos Zeman was in a stable condition in an intensive care unit Monday, a hospital spokeswoman said, as his illness delayed the initial steps in post-election talks to form a new government.

Zeman, 77, was taken to the hospital Sunday and was receiving treatment in the hospital’s highest-type of intensive care ward due to what the hospital director said were complications related to an undisclosed chronic condition.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s ANO party narrowly lost a parliamentary election completed Saturday to the center-right Together coalition and their allies the liberal Pirates/Mayors and appears to have no chance of forming a ruling majority.

Zeman was due to meet Babis on Wednesday, but that meeting was canceled Monday.

The Together coalition’s candidate for prime minister, Petr Fiala, said he would hold off requesting a meeting with the president at which he wanted to ask for a mandate to form the next government.

“I don’t know how serious the president’s condition is. I will wait until there is news that his condition has improved,” Fiala said via a spokesman.

Zeman, an ally of Babis, had said prior to the election that he would give the first shot at forming a government to the leader of the strongest individual party, which is Babis’s ANO.

Babis said after the election he would still try to talk to Fiala’s Civic Democrats, the strongest member of the Together coalition, with an offer to form a majority governing coalition.

However, the opposition groups declared they would not talk to ANO because of what they say are populist spending policies and unacceptable conflicts of interest involving Babis, who is the founder of a business empire.

“We had expected the situation after the election to be complicated, partly due to the president who has said whom he would appoint, or whom he will not appoint,” Pirate Party leader Ivan Bartos said on Czech Television.

(SD-Agencies)