Right turn in
Czecho-slovakia
CZECHO-SLOVAKIA any problems it must be the fault of the Communists, who continue to undermine the advance of reform.
So, the argument runs, they must be prevented from doing any more harm. Thus the lustrace and also the revival of the debate on the confiscation of Communist Party property.
This offensive by the right in general
ON FRIDAY October 4, 1991, the Federal parliament of
Czecho-Slovakia adopted a law on the purge (in Czech lustrace) of the administration and the publication of a list of alleged collaborators with the former political police, the StB.
This law applies to members of the Communist Party, from secretaries of local branches up to Central Committee members, and to all collaborators, agents and informers of the
StB. The lustrace bars them from occupying any post of responsibility in the administration, the army, national enterprises and agencies or in universities for a period of five years.
SLAVINA NOVAK
HIS LAW, the only one of its kind in Eastern Europe, is similar to the
Berufsverbot that has existed in
West Germany since 1949, which forbids any member of the Communist party from holding an official position.
According to the parliamentary deputies, the law will affect 250,000 Czechs and Slovaks, but former reform Communist leader Alexander Dubcek has estimated that it will involve around a million people. These figures are similar to those caught up by the purge which followed the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
The debate on the lustrace took place in an extremely tense emotional and political atmosphere in parliament. It ended with the right wing deputies applauding their victory. The vote was passed by 148 to 31
-the latter consisting basically of the
Communists and social democrats. The liberal Civic Movement (OH called for the vote to be "ignored".
Why are the right so bitter against the
Communists two years after the Velvet
Revolution? The first thing is to place the vote in the context of the approaching legislative elections in June 1992.
Slowdown in economic reform
The slowdown in the economic reform, whose results are not yet evident, has placed its most ardent supporters in an uncomfortable position. These proponents of the pure Thatcherite gospel find it hard to explain their slow and prudent policy, why the privatization programme is so slow and why investments by foreign capital are so parsimonious.
Furthermore, to look at the thing a bit more closely, it rapidly becomes clear that the distinctions between the parties on the conception of the reforms and the manner of their implementation are fine. Leaving aside the shades of difference between the various right wing outfits, the only difference between the liberal project promoted by the OH and the project of the Thatcherite Vaclav Klaus, supported by the Democratic Civic Party (ODS)
- both groups are offshoots of the old Civic Forum — is over the speed at which the reforms should be implemented; there is no argument over their content.
Furthermore, the forthcoming elections will for the first time no longer turn on the issue of "for or against the old regime". This time, rather than big umbrella formations such as the Civic Forum and the Public Against Violence, a large number of parties will be competing for the seats.
### Parties differentiate themselves
In this new framework each party feels obliged to mark itself off from its neighbours. You only have to listen to a figure such as Pavel Bratinka, the leader of the hardliners in the ODS, to realize this. Accusing the OH of "protecting the Communists", he adds: "these people are a deadly enemy of democracy. I hope they Will be wiped out at the elections."
Finally, facing growing discontent over the price to be paid for the economic reforms and the tolerance in high places for the economic mafia, it is important to divert criticism towards an easily identifiable "enemy".
Since it cannot possibly be the case that the pro-capitalist policies cause anyone and the ODS in particular, at a time when this party is on the rise, is not limited to the lustrace and the attacks on the Communists. There is also a law on political parties and associations toughening the conditions for the obligatory registration of any party, movement or association by the Ministry of Culture.
Thus, two years after the "velvet revolution" led by movements which thus established their existence as accomplished facts, there is a rapid move towards controls on political freedom.
At the same time, the recent attacks on the Social Democratic party, considered by Klaus as "the greatest danger for democracy and reform"; the symposium on Communist crimes that has just taken place in Prague, in the course of which the notion of a rerun of the Nuremburg trials was raised, and which was graced by the presence of Klaus and his acolytes; or even the aggressive tactics of the ODS in the town councils in an attempt to seize all the key posts, sometimes even at the expense of other right wing parties — as with the sacking of the Mayor of Prague in favour of a Klausite technocrat; are all signs of the right's slowly but steadily strengthening grip on society.
No violent rise of anti-Communism
However, it would be wrong to paint everything black and become overpessimistic. The parliamentary debate, Which was transmitted live on TV, has not been accompanied by a violent rise of anti-Communism.
Although the lustrace strikes a certain chord in the population, there have been no public demonstrations in support of it or urging that it be pushed through faster. Furthermore, the more optimistic among the deputies insist that in reality this law will not be seriously applied and will soon fall into disuse.
Reactions inside and outside parliament have not been long in coming. Nonetheless, they have been as feeble as the resistance in parliament.
The liberals (not the OH as such) have sent a letter to President Havel asking him NO ONE SHALL BE PERTES INFE ONENEE GROUND: 21