Status: 11/16/2019 5:00 a.m..
This weekend it will be 30 years since Czechs and Slovaks also set out to strip the communist regime. The commemorative events show once again the deep divide in Czech society.
By Peter Lange, ARD radio studio in Prague.
If Mikulas Minar’s verdict has its way, 30 years after the Velvet Revolution the Czechs have little reason for optimism:
“The president does not respect the constitution. The prime minister is in a huge conflict of interests. The judiciary and the public service media are threatened. Such an abuse of power cries out to heaven.”
Minar is the spokesman for the “A Million Moments for Democracy” initiative. He and his colleagues have called for another rally this afternoon on the Letna Heights. In the summer, more than 250,000 people came there to oppose Prime Minister Andrej Babis and President Demonstrating Milos Zeman.
Mikulas Minar is hoping for renewed massive protests against the prime minister and president.
“We will not let up”
But since the Prague public prosecutor closed the fraud investigation against Babis, the movement has lost one of its main criticisms. Nevertheless, the initiative is tightening the tone.
Babis will be given an ultimatum, says Minar: he must either resolve his conflict of interest by parting with the Agrofert Group and its media. And he must dismiss the Minister of Justice. Or he resigns. “If he doesn’t, we will respond with new creative protests.
We won’t let up until Andrej Babis resigns,” says Minar.
Prime Minister Babis has many critics – but his polls should reassure him.
Babis unimpressed?
The Prime Minister will probably not be particularly impressed. His ANO movement is stable over 30 percent and his popularity has grown. And the center-right opposition is as fragmented as ever.
The initiative of the “Million Moments for Democracy” therefore also obliges the opposition: They should kindly pull themselves together and develop a common strategy against Babis.
This time veterans of the Velvet Revolution of 1989 will also speak at Letna, which is intended to make it clear in which tradition the young citizens’ movement sees itself. Tomorrow, too, at the memorial march to the national road, the actors of yore will have their say, just as they did on Wenceslas Square.
Babis will be around, but not there. In the National Museum he will give a speech and open an exhibition on 1989, in the presence of colleagues from the Visegrad countries and with Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble as a special guest.
President Zeman is staying away from public memorial services.
“Much more valuable than roaring noise”
And President Zeman? He had announced early on that he did not want to speak at the public events. Today he will open the new Czech House in Bratislava with his Slovak counterpart Zuzana Caputova.
Even on the actual day of remembrance, nothing will be heard from him in Prague – his spokesman Jiri Ovcacek reiterated it: Zeman was “a direct actor in the events of November 1989”. He will dedicate himself to November 17th and the events on the national road in silent memory. “That is much more valuable than flaming words, big speeches and roaring noise.”
And so the divided Czech society will separately remember the days of November 1989, when something completely different seemed possible for a few weeks.
30 years of the Velvet Revolution.
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