TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121189/12118900.043

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.9 KB | 118 lines

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What Have You Done for Us Lately?


As soon as the Czechoslovak regime grants one reform, the people
demand another

By Jill Smolowe


    At 10:55 a.m. last Tuesday, Vaclav Havel stepped from a
silver Volkswagen Golf and, trailed by eight fellow members of
the Civic Forum, proceeded to a second-floor conference room in
the cream stucco building. Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec opened
the talks with a seven-minute statement outlining the
government's concessions. In return, Adamec said, "please
terminate your strikes. This is my wish and my plea." Havel was
in no mood to be conciliatory. For the next 18 minutes, he
listed the Civic Forum's demands, all of which, he said, must
be met by Dec. 10.

    "I know that looks like an ultimatum," Havel said.

    "It doesn't look like one," Adamec spluttered. "It is one."

    Havel quickly called for a recess. After consulting with
his delegation for 25 minutes, Adamec reconvened the group and
agreed to virtually every request except the call for the
immediate resignation of his government. Next day Czechs watched
in amazement the first ever live-television broadcast of a
session of the national parliament. By a vote of 309 to 0, the
legislators struck down infamous Article 4 of the constitution,
which enshrines the "leading role" of the Communist Party.

    Like a video tape on fast forward, Prague was racing
through a revolution so quickly that even the participants could
barely keep track of developments. The opposition never stopped
to bask in celebration. Since its inception three weeks ago, the
Civic Forum has emerged as the most single-minded and
uncompromising opposition force in Eastern Europe. Last week,
as the Communist leaders tried to mollify their countrymen, the
Civic Forum kept up the pressure, meeting each new concession
with more demands and deadlines.

    Havel and company had been emboldened by the response to
their call for a two-hour strike last Monday. At the stroke of
noon, millions of workers and students took to the streets,
shutting down hundreds of enterprises, from huge steelworks to
the local Fiat service agency. Not only was the astounding
turnout a sharp rebuke to the country's leaders, but it was a
warning that a few cosmetic changes within the Politburo would
not satisfy the demands for a more democratic system.

    The brisk rate of change has already created stress
fractures between the students, who have their own strike
committee, and the Civic Forum, whose leaders are drawn largely
from Charter 77, an umbrella opposition group set up in 1977 to
defend human and civil rights in Czechoslovakia. The students,
who were faster to draw up a concise list of demands, have been
irked by the Civic Forum's failure to include younger voices in
its deliberations. "The Civic Forum is more experienced," says
Monika Pajerova, 23, "but we are more radical." Some within the
Civic Forum regard the students as "children of Communists" who
led privileged lives while older dissidents spent years in jail
for their views.

    There are also hints of potential rifts within the Civic
Forum. Until now, the organization has striven to encourage
consensus and avoid partisan affiliation. "The Civic Forum's
purpose," says Havel, "is to be a bridge between the
totalitarian system and true pluralistic democracy." But popular
heroes are already emerging. One is Valtr Komarek, 59, director
of the official Institute of Forecasting of the Czechoslovak
Academy of Sciences. An academic with a magnetic speaking style,
Komarek seized the nation's imagination last weekend with a
nine-minute televised address that detailed Communist
incompetence in economic management. By the Monday strike,
posters had already been printed reading KOMAREK INTO THE
GOVERNMENT.

    According to some Civic Forum supporters, Komarek is
furious that Havel and his colleagues are banking on the
political survival of Prime Minister Adamec instead of
supporting Komarek for the position. When asked by TIME if he
was a candidate for Prime Minister, Komarek responded, "I leave
this open. My position personally is very modest. I don't think
a well-brought-up person should say, `I want to be Prime
Minister.'" Komarek feels that the Civic Forum tends too heavily
toward compromise and should instead mount a radical assault on
the existing order. "What's needed," he says, "is the
establishment immediately of an interim government of experts,
democratic experts." For their part, the Civic Forum leaders
fear that what they perceive as a bid for power by Komarek might
upset the delicate consensus that has given the opposition the
upper hand in negotiations with the government.

    Even so, the Civic Forum is a model of unity when compared
with the Communist Party. Under attack not only from citizens
but from rank-and-file members as well, the party seems to be
desperately reshuffling its players in hopes of appeasing the
public. Adamec must strike a careful balance between party
hard-liners and the Civic Forum's relentless pressure for swift
action. Last week several Communist legislators apologized for
failing to respond sooner to the popular mood. Even ousted party
leader Milos Jakes supported the abolition of the party's
constitutional right to lead the country.

    Other unexpected triumphs have attended the revolution.
Last Tuesday two Civic Forum representatives delivered a letter
to the Soviet embassy asking the Supreme Soviet to disavow the
1968 invasion. The two were assured the letter would be telexed
to Moscow promptly. "We are very happy with the way events are
going," embassy counselor Vasili Filipov told them. "Especially
that there is no bloodshed, because we feared bloodshed." How
times have changed.

-- David Aikman and Kenneth W. Banta/Prague