The next Czech president will be a Trumpish oligarch or a general

the Gothic rockpile that looms over the Czech capital like a giant bat, is the official residence of the country’s president. In a Kafkaesque touch, no president has actually lived there in decades. On January 13th and 14th eight candidates vied to become the castle’s next official occupant, and in another Kafkaesque touch, none of them won. , an oligarch who served as prime minister until the autumn of 2021, and Petr Pavel, a retired general, finished neck-and-neck in the first round of the election. With the second round scheduled for January 27th and 28th, Mr Babis has unleashed a viciously negative campaign. It will be a “uniquely disgusting” two weeks, predicts Karel Schwarzenberg, a former Czech foreign minister who ran for president in 2013 and now backs Mr Pavel.This is the Czech Republic’s third direct presidential election: a constitutional change in 2012 scrapped the previous system, a parliamentary process prone to back-room deals. Fully 68% of voters turned out. The candidates included Danuse Nerudova, an academic who hoped to become the country’s first female president, and Jaroslav Basta, a far-right populist. Mr Pavel got 35.4% of the vote, Mr Babis exactly 35%. Ms Nerudova, whom polls had shown doing well, unexpectedly finished a distant third with 13.9%.