Install Python 2.6 on CentOS

sudo rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/x86_64/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
sudo wget http://dagobah.ftphosting.net/yum/smartfile.repo -O /etc/yum.repos.d/smartfile.repo
yum list *python26*
yum install -y python26 python26-devel

Reference: argustus