With Vaclav Havel bowing out as President, the Czech press has given the ex-dissident, playwright and initially reluctant statesman a generally favourable report.

Commentator Martin Komarek, writing in the daily Mlada Fronta Dnes, argues that while Mr Havel has been "no saint", he has acquitted himself well.

He wanted to shake off the formalities of the presidency, but grew to like the trappings of office. Martin Komarek in Mlada Fronta Dnes

Catapulted into the political leadership by Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, Mr Havel was president for 13 years at a time of huge social, economic and political change, in which the former dissident himself played a major role, Komarek notes.

"Isn't that, in itself, proof that he was a good president?" he asks.

Square peg

But Vaclav Havel is also a man of contradictions, Komarek notes.

"He wanted to shake off the formalities of the presidency, but at the same time he grew to like the trappings of office." As president, he sought to place himself above party politics, "but not even he managed to square that circle."

"A good president," he concludes, "and, we should add, a courageous man."

It is doubtful that anyone will be able to craft such well-turned speeches Jiri Franek in Pravo

Jiri Franek, writing in the daily Pravo, notes that President Havel was among the European leaders lining up behind the London-Madrid-Rome axis in support of President Bush's campaign against Iraq, in opposition to France and Germany.

Some of Mr Havel's actions, he notes, "polarised society into irreconcilable camps."

Quo vadis, Czech Republic?

Martin Zverina, writing in Lidove Noviny, ponders the stalemate in the Czech parliament's repeated attempts to elect Mr Havel's successor.

The shortlist, Zverina says, is essentially the outcome of an effort to put forward practically anyone acceptable to Czech MPs and senators.

"But who wants a president who is unknown and politically incomprehensible?" he asks.

Austria's president gives Mr Havel a farewell gift

With no successor in sight to hand the baton to, Jiri Franek, writing in Pravo, wonders at "the courage" of those aspiring to take the outgoing president's place.

They will have "a hard time" when comparisons begin to be made with their predecessor, he warns.

"Even if they measure up to Havel in some respects, there is one respect in which their luck will surely fail," he predicts, concluding his assessment of the eminent man of Czech letters.

"It is doubtful that anyone will be able to craft such well-turned speeches written in such perfect Czech as those of Havel."

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.