A SCANDAL including a love affair, the abuse of secret services and alleged corruption swept away Petr Nečas, the Czech Republic's prime minister, and his centre-right cabinet nearly a year before elections were scheduled. The outgoing ruling coalition now hopes to cling to power under a new leader as details of the scandal continue to emerge.

Mr Nečas stepped down yesterday after his chief of staff (and allegedly his mistress) Jana Nagyová (pictured) was charged in two criminal probes. Documents that appear to be her indictments were leaked to the media and a court decided to keep her in custody pending trial. He also gave up leadership of his party, the Civic Democrats, and said that he will not run in future elections.

This was an abrupt turn of events. When news of the scandal first broke, the prime minister as well as his coalition partners looked determined to weather the storm. Before the weekend, Karel Schwarzenberg, the foreign minister and the head of the junior ruling TOP 09 party, nonchalantly told Lidové Noviny, a daily, that the cabinet "will survive this; it has been mild tea so far”. But, as the scope of the affair grew, TOP 09 changed its mind, a politician close to weekend talks with the embattled prime minister said.

The resignation offered the MPs a slightly more convenient way out of the crisis. Coalition lawmakers would not be forced to back the discredited premier in a no-confidence vote planned for today. And the initiative on Mr Nečas's part would give the ruling parties a better chance to hold on to power until the end of their term in spring next year.

It is up to the leftist president, Miloš Zeman, a fierce critic of the collapsed cabinet, to pick the next prime minister. Mr Zeman said yesterday that he plans to start meeting with parliamentary party leaders on June 21st. The outgoing coalition hopes that Mr Zeman will accept its plan to bring in a new prime minister from the Civic Democratic party.

The proposal has two drawbacks. The Civic Democrats have to come up with a candidate acceptable to both the coalition partners and the president. It has to be someone untainted by scandal neither past nor present. "It will be hard because it is necessary to find a person who is clean, as they say," said a coalition lawmaker. "Someone who is not at risk of being ensnared in the current investigation." And this new, clean leader must be capable of mustering a majority in parliament's tightly-divided 200-seat lower house to pass a vote of confidence.

While the Civic Democrats have yet to announce their pick, several names already circulate in the media. Martin Kuba, the industry and trade minister and the party's interim leader, said he is ready to take over but he is unacceptable for TOP 09 over his alleged ties with a disreputable businessman. Potential candidates also include Zbyněk Stanjura, the transport minister, Pavel Blažek, the justice minister, his predecessor in office, Jiří Pospíšil, and Miroslava Němcová, the speaker of the parliament's lower house. If the ruling parties fail to strike a viable deal, lawmakers are expected to force a snap election. In the least likely option, Mr Zeman could also appoint a caretaker cabinet.

Meanwhile, new details about the scandal continue to surface. E15.cz, a business news website, published what appear to be the indictments in both criminal cases involving Ms Nagyová and seven other suspects, who include two military intelligence chiefs, their subordinate, a former deputy minister and three former lawmakers. They were detained as a by-product of an investigation that originally aimed to pin down powerful businessmen and lobbyists suspected of scheming to gain control of state-owned firms.

Ms Nagyová is accused of asking military intelligence to snoop on three civilians, including the premier's estranged wife, Radka Nečasová. Outlining her motive, the prosecutors write that Ms Nagyová was persuading Mr Nečas to divorce his wife, whom she suspected of having an affair. The document also says that she had "highly negative attitude" towards Ms Nečasová.

Ms Nagyová's lawyer, however, told Právo, a daily, that his client meant no harm. He said that she tried to protect the premier and his children from a potential scandal as she suspected Ms Nečasová of being under influence of Jehovah's Witnesses. (Many Czechs, who are largely secular, consider the Christian movement to be a sect.) He said that Ms Nagyová was hurt by the fact that police tapped her private conversations with the outgoing premier and knew of their "intimate relationship". Mr Nečas, who initially stood by his aide, claimed he had no knowledge of her actions and apologised to the victims.

In the second case, Ms Nagyová allegedly bribed last year three Civic Democratic lawmakers with lucrative posts in state-controlled firms in exchange for their support of the government. Mr Nečas, who was involved in the deal-making, according to one of the leaked documents, is a suspect in the case, a state attorney told Czech Television.

In a revealing detail of the muddy depths to which the Czech political culture has plunged, a heated public debate has raged in the media and on the internet about whether the ugly deal even constituted corruption. "This is not an act of corruption," Marek Benda, a long-time Civic Democratic lawmaker, told a press conference. "It's so absurd. We would have to abolish politics as such, or let them distribute hundreds, perhaps hundreds of thousands of these criminal complaints over the past twenty years, if I count in municipalities and regions."