And what they need to get it...

Keep it simple. Ask yourself what Milos Zeman, Bohuslav Sobotka and Andrej Babis really want. And then ask what they need to get it.

Milos Zeman wants to take control of CSSD. For this, he needs CSSD to need his proxy party, SPOZ. This political manoeuvre will collapse if SPOZ fails to make it into parliament.

Bohuslav Sobotka wants to keep control of CSSD. For this, he needs an ally strong enough to defeat the Zemanites within CSSD.

And Andrej Babis wants to guarantee his economic rents, which is to say, the state subsidies and protection from competition that his business enjoys today. For this, he needs political power.

Of the three of them, Babis is the most readable. People know where Babis is vulnerable. Whereas Sobotka and Zeman have only their political power to lose, Babis has tangible business interests to protect. It is true that Babis will have to keep his people in parliament happy. Some of his team, such as the former communist, careerist and lobbyist, Pavel Telicka, will be as easy to keep sweet as any ambitious employee - a contract here, a sinecure there and it is all taken care of. Others, like the former Brno dissident, Jiri Zlatuska, might be more troublesome. My goodness, let us hope so!

Sobotka’s public swipes at Babis this week are a sign that he thinks SPOZ will soon cease to be his problem and become Zeman’s problem instead. He has even said as much. Zeman has made a considerable tactical error by allowing himself to be SPOZ.

Certainly, Sobotka knows that reaching a deal with Babis on the formation of a government will be much easier than negotiating with Zeman. And if SPOZ fails, it will remove much of Babis’s room to manoeuvre. For Sobotka, it is less important that CSSD will need ANO 2011 to form a government: what really matters is that Babis’s chance to play him off against Zeman will disappear if SPOZ fails.

It will be simple enough for Sobotka and Babis to strike a deal, mediated by their long standing, mutual business partner, the competition lawyer, Radek Pokorny. And as I have said, it is clear what Babis needs: continued subsidies and a lenient competition authority to keep his bottom line secure. Such rents are easily provided.

In my opinion, there are two likely outcomes of these elections, and both count on Andrej Babis. One is a Sobotka-led CSSD in coalition with ANO 2011 and KDU-CSL. The other, I hope less likely, is a Zeman-dominated CSSD in coalition with SPOZ and ANO 2011.

The difference between them might be small for Babis’s business interests. But for the rest of us, the difference is likely to be very great indeed. For a start, the first arrangement will have more chance of lasting because it is more likely to satisfy the stated aspirations of ANO 2011. It might even introduce some long overdue reforms, including a meaningful reform that would help to depoliticise the public administration of this country after 25 years of waiting.

But before we all get too excited, remember that the last thing Babis wants is an active competition authority staffed with brilliant competition economists capable of running rings around lawyers like Pokorny. The fact is that the second arrangement, in which power is concentrated in the hands of two individuals is almost ideal for both: ideal would be if one of them got eaten by a bear.