Not wasted

Andrej Babiš's first government will apparently suffer the worst confidence-vote defeat in Czech history today. All the other political parties are expected to vote flat out against it, and not merely to leave the chamber, meaning that the vote should be 122-78 (although some unplanned absences are always possible). By no means, though, will this first "political" round be wasted. If the foreign media want to continue writing about Babiš's association with far-right extremists and Communists, they'll henceforth have to move down to the level of committee chairmen or Stork's Nest immunity to make their case. It's a win for Miloš Zeman, too, because all he wanted was the illusion of an ANO-SPD-KSČM coalition, and he'll still have it to a large degree. The OLAF situation complicates things for both Babiš and Zeman, but otherwise everything is still on schedule. Once this political round is over, the commercial negotiations - oligarch-to-oligarch - can begin in earnest.