TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/121189/12118900.043

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 6KB | 106 lines

EAST-WEST, Page 41

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