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Sat, May 26 2012
The Czech Gandhi
A woman signs in a condolence book for late former Czech president Havel at the Slovak government building in Bratislava.
Photo: Reuters
A poet, playwright, philosopher, political leader and patriot, Václav Havel was lodestar to his country as it shed the yoke of totalitarianism – a Herculean goal he worried might be slipping away during his final years.
Havel’s death on December 18 represents a reckoning for Czech citizens who almost unknowingly sidelined the national icon from public discourse in recent years.
As friend and current foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg said upon hearing of Havel’s death: "Václav Havel was unfortunately under-appreciated in our country in recent years. Perhaps only now are people realising who they’ve lost."
The government declared a three-day mourning period with a funeral at Prague’s St Vitus Cathedral.
The last president of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and the first of the Czech Republic (1993-2003), Havel is even more notable for an intellectual and moral clarity atypical of political figures of this or any other era.
"He was a gift from God that a country as fertile in arts and culture as the Czech Republic will only get once," said Tomáš Sedlaček, an economist and author who formerly worked for Havel. "That is also true in global terms. He was a sort of Gandhi, if I may, of the 1980s and 90s."
Read the full story in The Prague Post.
Havel’s death on December 18 represents a reckoning for Czech citizens who almost unknowingly sidelined the national icon from public discourse in recent years.
As friend and current foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg said upon hearing of Havel’s death: "Václav Havel was unfortunately under-appreciated in our country in recent years. Perhaps only now are people realising who they’ve lost."
The government declared a three-day mourning period with a funeral at Prague’s St Vitus Cathedral.
The last president of Czechoslovakia (1989-1992) and the first of the Czech Republic (1993-2003), Havel is even more notable for an intellectual and moral clarity atypical of political figures of this or any other era.
"He was a gift from God that a country as fertile in arts and culture as the Czech Republic will only get once," said Tomáš Sedlaček, an economist and author who formerly worked for Havel. "That is also true in global terms. He was a sort of Gandhi, if I may, of the 1980s and 90s."
Read the full story in The Prague Post.
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