Word: czeched
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Seven months after he resigned the presidency of the Czechoslovak federation to protest its disintegration, Vaclav Havel is a President once more. Elected to a five-year term by the parliament of the four-week-old Czech Republic, Havel will preside from the same office in Prague's Hradcany Castle over about two-thirds of his former country. The onetime playwright and erstwhile communist-era dissident promised to maintain a "moral dimension" in his government and to serve as a "more experienced and wiser" statesman in promoting accord with his nation's new neighbor, Slovakia...
...winner will be Europe. At the opening of the 21st century, the European Community will comprise an integrated market of 20 countries, newly including such advanced economies as Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Austria. By the middle of the century, it will have added the Czech republic, Hungary and Poland, and its members' population will total more than 400 million. By then, Ukraine, Russia and most of the rest of Eastern Europe will have achieved associate membership in the Community...
...causing trouble. In Czechoslovakia, Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus is pursuing a rapid move to free markets -- he pioneered the voucher scheme for privatizing state industry that Russia now proposes to copy -- at the price of agreeing to a date of Jan. 1 for splitting the nation into separate Czech and Slovak republics. Slovak insistence on breaking up the union is fueled partly by ethnic animosity, often expressed as resentment of a "big brother" arrogance on the part of the Czechs. But it also reflects the Prague government's refusal to keep subsidizing such Slovak heavy industries as the aluminum plant...
When Havel resigned the mostly ceremonial office last week, the ground beneath him was shifting. Czechoslovakia may soon split in two -- the Slovaks in the eastern half of the country breaking off to form an independent state, the Bohemians and Moravians in the Czech lands to the west organizing a faster-moving, more entrepreneurial state that might soon integrate with the European Community. In some ways a breakup would be logical. The Slovaks and those in the Czech lands were pieces of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire knit together in 1918, but they have deep differences of background, outlook...
...Some Czechs believe that Havel is too idealistic for politics. But his resignation may prove to be the shrewdest move in the game. He may now help invent a new Czech constitution and then become the first President of the new Czech state, with powers greater than those he has just abandoned...