But how is the center party supposed to fight if it has one of the two exits held open (on the right; on the left, there is a sickle and a hammer as a sign of shame)? And, as soon as it can't maneuver, it fights for life.

The KDU-ČSL could be saved by an able leader; there has always been interest in the center party. But where to find him among party officials who primarily expect to gain political dividends?

Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek should resign as soon as possible, but, for some unknown reason, the appointment of the next Cabinet leader will not take place until after the Oct. 20–21 Senate and municipal polls, and even then it remains uncertain who exactly the president will appoint, Jiří Franěk writes in Právo Oct. 5.

As head of the second-strongest party, ČSSD chairman Jiří Paroubek could get a chance to form a new Cabinet as early as next week. Instead we can expect to hear senseless arguments such as that Paroubek in fact already got his chance when he failed in his unofficial talks with the KDU-ČSL.

Any chance of a government lasting until the next regular polls seems fairly unlikely, but we cannot rule it out completely. Paroubek never promised to rule for just nine months (the time to early polls) and — heaven forbid — what if he succeeded in forming a stable government and ruled for the entire four years, naturally with Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia [KSČM] support?

Thank God we have a communist party! If not for the KSČM, all that the Green Party and Christian Democratic deputies said at the chamber's confidence vote would amount to pure babbling: We don't really want to support Topolánek, but we have to because of the Communist scare. It never really mattered that KSČM votes helped elect Václav Klaus president and that, often in the past, blue and red opposition voted as one in the chamber, but right now it seems a hell of a problem.

Paroubek himself contributed to this attitude by saying that he wouldn't mind getting votes from Martians. However, this not about Martians and the KSČM. It's all about the handy mantra of a KSČM-supported government, which perhaps lacks any real content but is able to conceal a number of things, the fear of a return of the communist times included.

By the way, the chamber session (that denied Topolánek confidence) was full of scares. Right-wingers warned against a left-wing scare — and the other way around. There was also the scare of two utopian ideologies: the communist one and the Blue Chance [ODS program] one. So, which are we to fear the most — which of the many scares? We should fear a long period without a government. And we should also fear early polls resulting in the very same situation we are in today, Franěk writes.