Word: havel
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Paradigm: Vaclav Havel, Cable News Network, information, fax machines, computers, Sam Nunn, the new Germany, pluralism, democracy, F.W. de Klerk, unsentimental ruthlessness, William Safire, the Pacific...
...VACLAV HAVEL...
...theme that reverberated last week across the Slavic lands of Eastern Europe. In Serbia a vendetta-minded super-patriot won voter endorsement as leader of Yugoslavia's dominant republic, while in supposedly velvetized Czechoslovakia ethnic jealousies threatened to split the nation. In an emergency appeal, President Vaclav Havel cited freedom's hazards. "The state," he said, "is not endangered from outside, as has happened many times in the past, but from within. We are putting it at risk by our own lack of political culture, of democratic awareness and of mutual understanding...
...Havel's moral authority defused a crisis of faith in Slovakia, the country's rustic eastern wing. But his remedy -- asking for the temporary right to rule by fiat if necessary -- differed only in degree from Walesa's ideal of an almost mystically righteous ruler who, as Poland's new President put it, can take "an ax" to obstacles. And Slobodan Milosevic, the steely leader elected by Serbs, won by virtue of his frank jingoism...
...Though Havel cited a survey indicating that 70% of Slovaks wanted to stay in the federation, he took no chances. Stepping in with a request to rule by decree if necessary, Havel warned that if democracy failed, "we would be cursed by future generations." Negotiators took the hint and produced a compromise: joint stock ownership of utilities and a rotating chairmanship of the central bank. But a perverse question continues to haunt the new democracies eager to join modern Europe's mainstream: What if the right to choose translates into the decision to say "No, thanks" to democracy...