What Have You Done for Us Lately?

By Jill Smolowe

At 10:55 a.m. last Tuesday, Vaclav Havel stepped from a silver Volkswagen Golf and, trailed by eight fellow members of the Civic Forum, proceeded to a second-floor conference room in the cream stucco building. Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec opened the talks with a seven-minute statement outlining the government's concessions. In return, Adamec said, "please terminate your strikes. This is my wish and my plea." Havel was in no mood to be conciliatory. For the next 18 minutes, he listed the Civic Forum's demands, all of which, he said, must be met by Dec. 10.

"I know that looks like an ultimatum," Havel said.

"It doesn't look like one," Adamec spluttered. "It is one."

Havel quickly called for a recess. After consulting with his delegation for 25 minutes, Adamec reconvened the group and agreed to virtually every request except the call for the immediate resignation of his government. Next day Czechs watched in amazement the first ever live-television broadcast of a session of the national parliament. By a vote of 309 to 0, the legislators struck down infamous Article 4 of the constitution, which enshrines the "leading role" of the Communist Party.

Like a video tape on fast forward, Prague was racing through a revolution so quickly that even the participants could barely keep track of developments. The opposition never stopped to bask in celebration. Since its inception three weeks ago, the Civic Forum has emerged as the most single-minded and uncompromising opposition force in Eastern Europe. Last week, as the Communist leaders tried to mollify their countrymen, the Civic Forum kept up the pressure, meeting each new concession with more demands and deadlines.

Havel and company had been emboldened by the response to their call for a two-hour strike last Monday. At the stroke of noon, millions of workers and students took to the streets, shutting down hundreds of enterprises, from huge steelworks to the local Fiat service agency. Not only was the astounding turnout a sharp rebuke to the country's leaders, but it was a warning that a few cosmetic changes within the Politburo would not satisfy the demands for a more democratic system.

The brisk rate of change has already created stress fractures between the students, who have their own strike committee, and the Civic Forum, whose leaders are drawn largely from Charter 77, an umbrella opposition group set up in 1977 to defend human and civil rights in Czechoslovakia. The students, who were faster to draw up a concise list of demands, have been irked by the Civic Forum's failure to include younger voices in its deliberations. "The Civic Forum is more experienced," says Monika Pajerova, 23, "but we are more radical." Some within the Civic Forum regard the students as "children of Communists" who led privileged lives while older dissidents spent years in jail for their views.

There are also hints of potential rifts within the Civic Forum. Until now, the organization has striven to encourage consensus and avoid partisan affiliation. "The Civic Forum's purpose," says Havel, "is to be a bridge between the totalitarian system and true pluralistic democracy." But popular heroes are already emerging. One is Valtr Komarek, 59, director of the official Institute of Forecasting of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. An academic with a magnetic speaking style, Komarek seized the nation's imagination last weekend with a nine-minute televised address that detailed Communist incompetence in economic management. By the Monday strike, posters had already been printed reading KOMAREK INTO THE GOVERNMENT.

According to some Civic Forum supporters, Komarek is furious that Havel and his colleagues are banking on the political survival of Prime Minister Adamec instead of supporting Komarek for the position. When asked by TIME if he was a candidate for Prime Minister, Komarek responded, "I leave this open. My position personally is very modest. I don't think a well-brought-up person ! should say, 'I want to be Prime Minister.' " Komarek feels that the Civic Forum tends too heavily toward compromise and should instead mount a radical assault on the existing order. "What's needed," he says, "is the establishment immediately of an interim government of experts, democratic experts." For their part, the Civic Forum leaders fear that what they perceive as a bid for power by Komarek might upset the delicate consensus that has given the opposition the upper hand in negotiations with the government.

Even so, the Civic Forum is a model of unity when compared with the Communist Party. Under attack not only from citizens but from rank-and-file members as well, the party seems to be desperately reshuffling its players in hopes of appeasing the public. Adamec must strike a careful balance between party hard-liners and the Civic Forum's relentless pressure for swift action. Last week several Communist legislators apologized for failing to respond sooner to the popular mood. Even ousted party leader Milos Jakes supported the abolition of the party's constitutional right to lead the country.

Other unexpected triumphs have attended the revolution. Last Tuesday two Civic Forum representatives delivered a letter to the Soviet embassy asking the Supreme Soviet to disavow the 1968 invasion. The two were assured the letter would be telexed to Moscow promptly. "We are very happy with the way events are going," embassy counselor Vasili Filipov told them. "Especially that there is no bloodshed, because we feared bloodshed." How times have changed.

With reporting by David Aikman and Kenneth W. Banta/Prague