Czech President Milos Zeman holds a mock submachine gun inscribed with the words "At journalists", and a bottle of Becherovka liquor instead of the gunstock, in October last year. Credit:AP Again, a European country is swinging on a familiar pendulum. At one end populism, nationalism and a distrust of the European Union – and of immigrants – with an Islamophobic twist. At the other end, liberal values, (more) open borders and Western-style democracy. Here, the pendulum is right in the middle. "We are probably at a crossroads," says Dr Milos Gregor, political scientist at Masaryk University in Brno. "The presidential elections could be quite crucial for the direction [of Czech politics]." Says Economist Intelligence Unit analyst Emily Mansfield: "Regardless who wins in the end there is clearly a very serious split down the middle of the country … around half of the country wants someone very outspoken and conservative and pro-Russian, and the other half want someone who is much more pro-Europe and statesmanlike and calm.

The main thing opposition candidate Jiri Drahos has to offer is that he's not Zeman. Credit:PETR DAVID JOSEK "That's quite a significant division within society and that's not going to go away, regardless of who wins." In a sense, says Hanley, the Czech election next week is about none of these things. It's a referendum on the current president, Milos Zeman. Zeman speaks after the first round of presidential voting in Prague on January 13. Credit:MICHAL KAMARYT Czech presidents used to be cut from a different cloth.

The first president after communism, eloquent dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel, inspired the Velvet Revolution with his poetic, suppressed works. He was friends with British playwright Tom Stoppard. He championed the rights of minorities, opposed discrimination and racist violence, and called intolerance the "biggest challenge of our time". He dreamt of a Czech Republic that was almost Scandinavian in its socialist liberalism. Drahos accompanied by wife Eva boards a train to Ostrava while campaigning last week. Credit:PETR DAVID JOSEK About the only thing he had in common with President Zeman is that the incumbent is also a heavy smoker. In 2014, Zeman was reportedly fined £1600 ($2800) for smoking in a hotel room in Bristol during a NATO summit. After his election in 2013 he told a Czech television director to bring him an ashtray in a studio where smoking was banned. These are the least of his offences against taste and polite society. Zeman, who claimed not to have childhood friends, is the sort of personable outspoken populist who regularly gets away with outrage.

He called Czech Roma "unadaptable and lazy", he has warned Czechs to arm themselves against a "super holocaust" carried out by Muslims. In October last year he held up a replica gun with "for journalists" written on it. He "wished death" to vegetarians and teetotallers during a meeting with winemakers, though he later claimed to have been referencing Hitler. "He was always a very plain-spoken politician, he was always known for his soundbites and his rather brutal putdowns," says Hanley (Zeman has been on the political scene a long time, previously as prime minister). "But as president there's been a whole series of incidents with him which have been seen as lacking the gravitas and dignity you'd want of a head of state." Search YouTube for "drunk Czech president" and you'll find footage of Zeman wobbling and staggering through a 2013 ceremony featuring the Czech crown jewels – he claimed he had a virus.

In 2014 on radio he used the c-word while attempting a translation of "Pussy Riot", and said the Czech government had "f---ed up" a law. Hence his opponent's key quote of the campaign. "I will strive for us to live in a country where respect and decency can once again be taken for granted," said Jiri Drahos, 68, former chairman of the Czech Academy of Sciences. It's the kind of statement that politicians love: hard to disagree with, almost meaningless. But Drahos wields it against Zeman as a barbed reminder to the conservative Czechs that their leader has an international reputation as a mouthy boozer. Just about anyone asked for their opinion on Drahos will, whether they approve of him or not, say "bland". "There's Zeman with his anti-immigration, nationalistic views, economically left-wing," says Hanley. "There's not much to [Drahos] other than the fact that he's not the above … someone who's just been put up as an independent to draw all the more liberal centre-right moderate vote together.

"He doesn't really have a vision. Which I guess you can say is part of the wider story. There isn't a powerful counter-vision of what a liberal Czechia would look like." Zeman won the biggest share of the first-round vote in the presidential election, 39 per cent, with Drahos a long way behind on 27 per cent. Drahos can be expected to benefit from the anti-Zeman vote in the run-off, says Mansfield. Four other candidates, with 32 per cent of the vote between them, immediately called on their voters to back Drahos. It's his election to lose. Not so fast, says Gregor. "I would say the chances of these two candidates are 50-50. Zeman only needs half a million more votes. Drahos needs 1.2 million more votes than he got in the first round."

Gregor predicts "fake news and misinformation" in the lead-up to the run-off on January 26-27. Zeman has strong ties to Russia – he is a regular visitor to Moscow and opposes the sanctions that followed the annexation of Crimea. He has a coterie of advisers with reported close ties to Russian political and industrial interests. Drahos would not be visiting Moscow any time soon. He's closer to the typical Czech: not anti-Russian per se, but treating them with a hefty serve of cynicism. Zeman also touts China as an alternative to closer European investment. In 2015, a Chinese energy company bought Slavia Prague, one of the country's oldest soccer clubs. A lot of Czechs don't mind this focus away from the EU they joined in 2004. Zeman appeals to a rural, older, conservative voting bloc. He fires them up with scare stories about immigrants, but he's tapping into a deeper malaise.

"It stands in for a lot of fears about where the country is going, and a sense of insecurity," says Hanley. "The EU was supposed to be this end-point of Czech politics, bringing economic security and prosperity. But then there was the eurozone crisis, the refugee crisis, there's Brexit. "And then there's this whole issue around refugee quotas which is a real touchstone issue across the whole eastern European region. Suddenly a lot of Czechs feel vulnerable. What they thought was a solid position in a very stable European organisation has turned out not to be that." The Czech Republic is booming on paper, with the lowest unemployment rate in the EU, and solid growth. But, says Gregor, "there is a feeling the EU is great in funding us, however they try to have an influence on our politics. Thanks to the Soviet Union, people are allergic to things like this." And the EU's insistence that the country takes a share of the refugees that have arrived in Europe has triggered this sense of violation.

Mansfield explains it's a strange issue. "There's a lot of resistance across central Europe to accepting refugees. They've typically had quite a homogenous social base and they're not happy about the idea that Brussels would dictate to them on accepting refugees." But the numbers are ridiculous. The Czech Republic has taken 12 refugees from the hundreds of thousands arriving on the continent. Their neighbour Slovakia took 16, and the EU seems to be OK with that. So the Czechs could take just four more, and it would probably be fine. Mansfield guesses the government deliberately tried to be seen as standing up to Brussels. But really, it doesn't want to be put in the same bracket as the fiercely illiberal Hungary and Poland. "This topic [immigration] is political issue No. 1 for two years already, in every election, municipal, parliamentary or presidential," says Gregor. "But the reality is that we have just a few migrants." Not only that, the president has almost no powers over migration intake. "Probably it's connected with the fear of the unknown."

The presidential election has an extra level of significance this week, after the new minority government of (himself controversial and outspoken) Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis lost a confidence vote. Zeman and Drahos disagree over whether Babis should be given another chance to try to form a government. Beyond the power to choose a prime minister, and an ill-defined foreign affairs role, the Czech president has little real power. Nevertheless, the Czech choice has real meaning. "It would change the country's image," says Hanley. "You've got Hungary and Poland on this collision course [with the EU], with a real dismantling of liberal democracy. It looks like the Czechs aren't going to go there – but where are they going to go?"