VACLAV KLAUS posed so convincingly as Central Europe's answer to Margaret Thatcher while he was the Czech prime minister that the collapse of his government amid scandal and economic chaos last November gave economic reform a bad name. Milos Zeman, who wants to be the next prime minister, speaks a different language. Instead of budgetary austerity, he preaches pump-priming; he is keen on fighting corruption, cool on privatisation. That talk is expected to take him to victory in the parliamentary election on June 19th and 20th. It may not, however, give his Social Democratic Party a comfortable majority with like-minded coalition partners.

Most opinion polls give the Social Democrats a quarter of the vote, though that share may rise once the undecided voters make up their minds. The Social Democrats may well need two partners to form a government. Mr Zeman's preferred allies are the Christian Democrats, led by the wily Josef Lux, now deputy prime minister in the caretaker government that took over after Mr Klaus fell. They are a good match. Mr Lux's supporters are mainly church-going country folk who share the Social Democrats' preference for a “social market” economy over the unalloyed capitalism Mr Klaus espoused. Having served in every post-communist government, they would bring experience to Mr Zeman's untested team.

It is the second partner that will give the next government its character. The likeliest candidate is the Pensioners' Party, led by a retired colonel who wants to soak the rich in order to raise pensions and lower the retirement age. It would give the centre-left, already inclined to make economic promises it will find difficult to keep, a decidedly populist cast.

That will be even truer if, as may well happen, the Social Democrats, Christian Democrats and Pensioners fall short of a majority in parliament. They would then depend for support on the (unreformed) Communists. Miloslav Ransdorf, a Communist bigwig, is already threatening to hold out for a couple of seats in the cabinet. Mr Lux would rather leave government than agree, but he might tolerate their support in parliament. The worry is that the Czech Republic's last experiment with a minority coalition—Mr Klaus's ill-fated right-wing government, which lasted less than 18 months—has set a dismal precedent.

Reform-minded Czechs dream that Mr Zeman will opt instead for the Freedom Union, a party formed by defectors from Mr Klaus's Civic Democrats which seems more committed than he was to genuine economic reform. The party's young leaders claim they would rather stay in opposition and concentrate on realigning a demoralised right. But a chance to remain in power might tempt them, especially since Mr Klaus's party—despite its ignominious eviction from power—looks likely to remain the biggest opposition force. They may not get it. Even if the Freedom Union wins enough seats to make a difference, Mr Zeman has nothing but contempt for the party and does not bother to hide it.

Mr Klaus has only himself to blame for the right's predicament. His hasty mass-privatisation programme, which made ordinary Czechs the formal owners of most enterprises but gave control to state-owned banks with no interest in improving them, created a crisis that culminated in a humiliating devaluation of the currency in May last year. Now unemployment and inflation are rising and real incomes are falling; the economy grew by just 1% in 1997 and will at best barely make 2% this year.

Worse, during Mr Klaus's reign both conservative politics and free enterprise became linked to corruption in the public mind. A recent audit found Mr Klaus's Civic Democratic Party riddled with tax evasion and dodgy book-keeping. Last week a top banker and the chairwoman of the country's biggest glass exporter became the latest in a growing list of executives arrested for stealing from shareholders of privatised companies. When Mr Zeman blasts the right for running an “economy of mafias”, he strikes a chord.

Mr Zeman might bring probity to economic management, but would he bring competence? The economy has steadied since last spring. High interest rates and the weaker currency have curbed imports and boosted exports. The rising unemployment rate, now 5.3%, is a sign that companies are at last beginning to restructure. The outgoing caretaker government has given its successor a running start on the next stage of privatisation. It sold the third-biggest bank to a Japanese brokerage. Investment bankers have been hired to flog other banks and utilities.

Mr Zeman may squander these small gains. For a start, he wants to boost the budget deficit from an expected 0.5% of GDP to 3%, and funnel the extra spending to infrastructure projects employing Czech firms. This is misguided. It would keep interest rates high and choke off private investment; favouritism for Czech firms would fall foul of the EU, which Mr Zeman wants his country to join. He also backs a budget-busting demand by 470,000 public-sector workers for a 20% pay rise. Bank privatisation can wait until 2000, says Mr Zeman, even though state-owned banks are the main culprits in the mismanagement of Czech enterprise.

But the omens are not all bad. A war on fraud would help the economy, especially if it means backing underfinanced watchdogs like the new securities commission, which is trying to clean up a murky stockmarket. And office might change Mr Zeman. At present he is answerable solely to disgruntled Czech voters. If he wins the election, he will have to learn to please two other masters: the EU and foreign investors, who doubtless stand ready to wallop the Czech currency again.