After a political crisis that tore apart the governing coalition earlier this year, most expected new Prime Minister Jirí Paroubek to be little more than a transitional leader, tasked with holding together a creaking Cabinet until parliamentary elections in June 2006.

Conventional wisdom predicted his time in office would be short, difficult and end in the spectacular failure of his left-of-center Social Democrats (CSSD) at the ballot box. But Paroubek, 52, has caught skeptics by surprise. He has seized his first 100 days in power to stamp his authority on the government, calm the CSSD's internal feuding and renew public support for his party, even if it still trails the right-of-center Civic Democrats (ODS), the senior opposition, in the polls.

Paroubek's personal standing with the public has also shot up. With 63 percent of citizens rating their view of him as "very positive" or "fairly positive" — up from 20 percent in March, according to a July poll by the STEM agency — he has become the country's second most popular politician, after President Václav Klaus.

Paroubek told The Prague Post that his greatest success has been a productive legislative agenda, though some political observers say his real strong point is his image as a bold, canny and competent head of government, at least compared to his predecessors.

"We don't have to agree with this government, but we have to admit that for the first time since 2002, we have a real prime minister in charge," read a recent opinion piece in Reflex.

Paroubek became prime minister April 25, re-forming a coalition Cabinet that became the third government since the 2002 general election.

He replaced 35-year-old Stanislav Gross, who quit after only 10 months amid a scandal sparked by his fuzzy explanations of the financing behind a private luxury flat and by his wife's business links with a brothel landlady.

"Paroubek is viewed as a strong leader by the people," said political analyst Vladimíra Dvoráková of the Prague School of Economics. "Gross, his predecessor, clearly lacked authority. His boyish smile was good for [attracting] political support, but as a prime minister he looked too young, inexperienced and lacking control."

Gross' predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimír Spidla, who quit following the crushing defeat of the CSSD in the June 2004 European Parliament elections, struggled to communicate his message during his time in office, even to members of his own party, Dvoráková said. "Paroubek, however, is quite good at that: He knows who to speak to, with whom to cooperate," she said. "He is simply better in the things that a politician should know how to do."

While Paroubek has a reputation as a pragmatist prepared to make compromises, he does not take kindly to challenges to his authority. Klaus's criticism of the EU constitution — which Paroubek's government made its priority to ratify — prompted the prime minister to threaten to limit the president's trips abroad.

Paroubek himself stresses the productivity of his Cabinet when reflecting on his first three months as prime minister.

"The government has concentrated in its first 100 days in office on submitting new laws and amendments to laws to Parliament," Paroubek told The Prague Post. "In fact, so many that we had to agree on a Chamber of Deputies meeting for a special session in mid-August," he said, when lawmakers would normally be in summer recess.

Among the government's achievements, Paroubek listed a bill to cut taxes for low-income workers, another to provide financial aid against future residential rent deregulation, and a third to reduce bureaucracy for those who want to build homes.

"Many of the bills have been postponed a long time, and we have managed to make up for this," Paroubek said. His government's next major initiative: a new labor code, to be presented to Parliament at the end of September, he said.

Paroubek's critics, however, accuse him of becoming a populist interested only in short-term political advantage.

"It's difficult to say that he has helped the economy at all," said David Marek, chief economist for Patria Online. "All important issues, like the budget deficit, pension reform, financing health care, have been postponed."

Marek said that Paroubek thinks "only about the several months ahead, until the next elections. He probably doesn't want to do anything that could be painful in the short term, but helpful to the economy in the longer term."

Paroubek, who graduated from the Prague School of Economics in 1976, served as Prague's deputy mayor from 1998–2004 in charge of financial policy, then spent just nine months in the Cabinet as regional development minister before becoming prime minister. Despite his rising popularity, his term in office has not gone without a hitch.

Some analysts say he made his first major misstep when he voiced support for club-wielding police in anti-riot equipment, who used tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands of fans in Mly´nec, west Bohemia, at the annual CzechTek music festival July 30.

The operation sparked protests by thousands of ravers, who accused police of tactics reminiscent of communist-era repression.

Some have speculated that Paroubek could suffer political damage from the affair, but analyst Bohumil Dolezal isn't sure. "The CzechTek problem has enraged some parts of the intellectual public, but probably not general voters," he said.

Meanwhile, the change of fortunes for the Social Democrats in the Paroubek era has forced analysts to reassess their predictions for the political landscape after the June elections, in which the CSSD had been expected to fare disastrously.

The current coalition Cabinet consists of the CSSD, the centrist Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) and the right-of-center Freedom Union (US-DEU).

"Only three months ago, it was almost taken as a given that [after the elections] there would be a majority coalition between the Civic Democrats and the Christian Democrats. I don't think that anyone would bet on it now," said political analyst Jirí Pehe, a former adviser to ex-president Václav Havel.

Instead, a grand coalition may arise between the ODS and the CSSD, Pehe said. A second possibility is an ODS minority Cabinet, tolerated by the CSSD. A third scenario envisions the CSSD forming a one-party government, without enough deputies for a parliamentary majority but supported on most issues by the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM), which — in return for certain pledges on policy — would promise not to let the government fall.

Meanwhile, Paroubek's rising star has caused personal difficulties for ODS leader Mirek Topolánek, whom the ODS had been counting on as a credible future prime minister when compared with Gross or Spidla.

"Now when [people] compare Topolánek with Paroubek, Paroubek comes across as a better prime minister, more competent. The ODS has a problem," Pehe said.

The Civic Democrats cannot replace Topolánek too close to next summer's elections lest they appear disorganized, Pehe noted, and so "they are probably stuck with him."