LITERALLY overnight, Mr Vaclav Klaus has gone from the unchallenged helmsman of Czech reform to a man fighting for political survival.
As late as Saturday evening the Czech prime minister, silver haired and elegantly dressed, insisted projections showing his centre right coalition had lost its majority in parliamentary elections were wrong. But he had miscalculated.
With all votes counted, results on Sunday showed Mr Klaus's Civic Democratic Party (ODS) had failed narrowly to win 30 per cent of the vote as he had predicted.
But worse for the 55 year old economist, the conservative coalition which has pushed through his free market reforms in the past four years saw his majority melting away.
His centre right coalition won 99 seats in the Czech Republic's general election, according to the official result released yesterday by the electoral commission. That result leaves Mr Klaus short of an absolute majority in the 200 seat parliament.
The ODS won 68 seats the Christian Democratic Union 18 and the Civic Democratic Alliance 13. The main opposition Social Democratic Party won 61 seats, the Communist Party of Bohemia Moravia 22 seats and the far right Republican Party, 18.
The election, held on Friday and Saturday, was the third legislative ballot in the Czech Republic since the fall of communism in 1989 and the first since the breakup of Czechoslovakia three years ago.
But Mr Klaus's career is by no means over. He has got himself out of scrapes before, although none as serious as this.
But his exceptional self confidence - his critics call it arrogance - will play a significant role in the horsetrading already under way to form a new government.
"The worst scenario is no result and the necessity to find some special solutions or to make new elections," he said.
Mr Klaus's self confidence projected to politicians, bankers and investors around the world, has played a significant role in the Czech Republic's reputation abroad as a shining example of how to transform a communist economy.
Declaring that the Czechs are the only central Europeans to have entered the "post transformation stage", he has trumpeted his record of mass privatisation economic growth, single digit inflation and negligible unemployment.
He showed his skills by negotiating the 1993 break up of Czechoslovakia with his Slovak counterpart, Mr Vladimir Meciar. He had an electoral mandate then but now he does not and the knives are out.