Jiri Dienstbier may refuse to endorse either presidential candidate. But like many of his voters, he would prefer the unthinkable to the unbearable.

Whatever they might say to the contrary in public, there are good reasons why those who supported Jiri Dienstbier in the first round will be seriously considering supporting Karel Schwarzenberg in the second.

First and foremost, CSSD will want to avoid the fate of ODS. A scheming President Zeman poses a much greater risk for the party, both now and in the longer term, than a disinterested President Schwarzenberg. Zeman is too close to CSSD and too interested in its affairs to resist interfering. He will harm CSSD as president just as President Klaus has harmed ODS.

The battles between a governing CSSD and a presiding Zeman would quickly degenerate into internecine battles. Such fights are vastly more destructive than disagreements over policy of the kind the party would enjoy, and derive considerable popular support from, if their interlocutor was President Schwarzenberg.

There are longer term benefits as well. If the sixteen per cent of voters who wanted Jiri Dienstbier to become president think ahead to 2018, they will vote for Schwarzenberg in two weeks’ time, in order to improve their candidate’s chances in five years’ time.

A Zeman presidency would make it harder for CSSD to portray Dienstbier as the candidate of change in 2018, especially if CSSD had spent much of the intervening five years bickering with the president in ways the electorate would find undermining of both, rather than opposing him in ways that it would find constructive. Consider church restitution for example.

There is another compelling party political reason for Dienstbier’s voters to support Schwarzenberg in the second round. This is the fact that CSSD will benefit much more if Kalousek remains their principal political opponent as general elections approach.

For as long as Schwarzenberg was willing to act as the titular chairman of TOP 09, he served, for part of the electorate at least, as an antidote to the poisonous Kalousek. And there is no other known antidote to Kalousek than Karel Schwarzenberg. I cannot imagine Leos Heger being able to render Kalousek less toxic in the eyes of younger, centrist voters as Schwarzenberg has done.

If Schwarzenberg becomes president, TOP 09 is placed in the uncomfortable position of having to find a new chairman, and this may cause the party to fracture.

And this is precisely why those CSSD voters who resent the role Schwarzenberg has played in breathing new life into the longest-serving and worst finance minister this country has ever suffered, should now vote for him.

Yesterday, Vladmir Spidla summed up well why CSSD should prefer Schwarzenberg to Zeman: "He is a clear opponent, he is not able to split the left, and mobilise it. Milos Zeman is burdened by thousands of links to the Left, he has a clear goal to weaken the Social Democrats. And if we want to win the next elections, Schwarzenberg is a better bet."

("Jakkoliv to zní paradoxně, myslím, že podpora Karla Schwarzenberga je výhodnější, protože on je jasný protivník, nemá schopnost narušit strukturu levice a její mobilizaci. Miloš Zeman je zatížen tisíci různými vztahy na levici, má jasný cíl sociální demokracii oslabit. Vždy tak jednal. Nevím, co bychom měli dělat. Chceme-li vyhrát volby, tak lepší východisko bude jako prezident Karel Schwarzenberg.")