Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 11, 1990 TAG: 9006110105
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HENRY KAMM THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: PRAGUE, CZECHOSLOVAKIA LENGTH: Medium
In their first chance to vote freely in 44 years, the Czechoslovaks overwhelmingly confirmed President Vaclav Havel's citizens' movement as the governing party.
The sweeping victory will give full constitutional legitimacy to the new coalition government, which Civic Forum leaders said Sunday they would seek to form.
But it also challenges the movement, born only seven months ago in the ardor of Czechoslovakia's peaceful revolution, with pragmatic tasks that it was able to put largely aside while the enthusiasm of a nation newly liberated from dictatorship and the personal popularity of Havel carried it toward election victory.
Official results of the parliamentary elections Friday and Saturday gave Civic Forum and Public Against Violence, the Czech and Slovak branches of Havel's movement, resounding majorities in both houses of the national Parliament and the legislature of the Czech Republic, and a heavy plurality in the legislature of the Slovak republic.
The results, though still incomplete, are not in dispute.
Civic Forum policy-thinkers, interviewed in the days preceding the voting, said they were daunted by the tasks ahead.
Asked at a news conference Sunday night what the main objectives in politics, economics and diplomacy of the new government would be, Ivan Havel, a principal member of his brother's brain trust, replied:
"To lead in the transition from totalitarianism to democracy, from a centralized to a market economy, from a separation from the whole world to a policy of reunion first with Europe and then with the rest of the world."
The planners concede that concrete steps to achieve those vast and vague goals will be difficult to devise and carry through.
A foreign-policy planner said that Prague's newly active role in international diplomacy, characterized by the frequency with which Havel and Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier travel abroad and receive foreign visitors, had served in part to establish the new government's domestic standing.
That credit may help to make palatable the slowness with which it is tackling the domestic problems left by four decades of communism.
The Civic Forum policy planners know that the tonic effect of liberation from dictatorship and international initiatives cannot indefinitely substitute for achievements in making the lives of citizens materially richer.
"The process of change is too slow in comparison with our needs," said Josef Vavrousek, another Civic Forum brain-trust member and government official.
"The first stage of our revolution was too short. There was not enough time to destroy the old structures. As a result, we have to dismantle the old while we construct the new, and the two processes slow each other down."
First steps have been taken toward decentralizing the economy and opening the door to foreign investment.
by CNB