this weekend I was out of Prague and back in the UK for a family birthday.
whilst I was away, the Czech Republic celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution (
Sametová revoluce) which brought to an end decades of brutal communist rule in the former Czechoslovakia.
My Czech teacher was a student at the time of the revolution and was showing us photos of the demonstrations and explaining in detail what happened. There's nowt so good as a proper oral history from people that were there.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50419667 is a good overview of then, and now
A few short years later, after free elections had made Vaclav Havel the first PM of the free Czechoslovak state, the country divided in the Velvet Divorce into Czech Republic (now Czechia, sort of...) and the Slovak Republic. The historic divorce meeting took place at Villa Tugendhat just outside Brno, the Czech Republic's second city. Built from concrete in the late 20s and following designs by a pair of German architects, the villa truly is iconic, not just here, but around Europe as one of the pioneers of modernism and functionalist architecture.
You can see why:
| Click to see full-size image. |
| Click to see full-size image. |
Anyway, 30 years hence and the Republic is still in a state of flux. The PM is a Slovak-born billionaire who stands accused of corruption and of being a collaborator with the Communist-era secret police StB (
Státní bezpečnost / State Security). The Slovak Constitutional Court ruled in 2012 that there was no doubt that Mr. Babiš was certainly a collaborator but - obviously - made no comment on his suitability to be the PM of a different country. Many Czechs distrust him and there is evidence that he has misused EU subsidies for his own gain (the so-called
Stork's Nest affair..) and would long for a return to the 'Lustration' period, where collaborators with the StB and other communist-era institutions were banned from the highest offices in the land. That law expired in 2000.
Mr Babiš, and his ally President Zeman (who maybe I'll write about another time as he is quite a character) continue. Babiš as the leader of a coalition goverment with his ANO ('YES') party who is facing calls to resign. The anniversary of the Velvet Revolution was the perfect opportunity for 250,000 people to descend on the
Letenská pláň park in the city to rally and call for his resignation. That's part of the movement
Milion chvilek pro demokracii ('A million moments for democracy'). Not bad, but not quite as many visitors as a similar rally in the summer which had perhaps 300,000. There's still some way to go to reach the numbers during the Velvet Revolution which numbered 800,000 or so. Although, of course, the country is smaller now..
Today they renewed calls for him to resign. It's worth noting, whilst he has many detractors, he has his supporters too. His party won the Euro elections with about 20% of the vote, and it's fair to say that outside of the metropoles of Prague and Brno he enjoys quite a swelling of populist support.
Removing him from power will not be easy - either at the ballot box or otherwise. There are now more than 500,000 signatures on one million moments petition for him to resign. A salve for democrats is that in the history of the world a non-violent protest engaging 3.5% of the population has
never failed to bring about change. A fascinating article on that subject
here.
If I've made a small contribution, it's that I pointed out this article to two young journalists I met in a bar on the eve of the larger summer protest and lo and behold, it appeared in their newspaper (ironically, owned by Babiš) the next day.
The population of the Czech Republic has 10.65m people, so the magic mark for 3.5% stands at around 375,000 people.
Below a comparison of the protests in November 1989 and November 2019 from iDnes, a daily newspaper.
| Click to see full-size image. |
The next months promise to be interesting....
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