Civic Forum searches for answers and allies 'Don't mention the economy!' At first glance the Czechoslovak elections in June followed the pattern of other elections in Eastern Europe, with the ousting of the stalinist party from office and the emergence of a leadership more favourable to western "democracy'. But as COLIN MEADE shows, the results and the situation are more complex, and the position of the working class includes strengths as well as problems. Civic Forum (OF and its Slovak equivalent. Public against Violence(VPN), led by personalities identified with the leadership of the "gentle revolution' in November last year, gained a crushing victory in the Czechoslovak elections on June 8-9, with 46 percent of the vote nationwide on a tumout of 96 per cent.
In second place came the Czechoslovak Communist Party (KSC) with 13.6 per cent, followed by the Christian Democrats (KDU/KDH) with 11.6 per cent. This last result was a bitter blow to a party that had seemed at one stage to be fast catching up on the OF/VPN and believed itself certain to push the KSC into third place.
The OF/VPN did better in the urban centres than in the countryside, and while in the Czech Lands the OF got 53 per cent of the vote, the VPN could only manage 29.3 per cent in Slovakia, although even here it was the largest party, beating the Christian Democrats into second place. The OF/VPN victory was due, of course, in the first place Page 32
FEATURES to their identification as the party of the anti-bureaucratic revolution: but it was also a tangible victory over the Christian Democrats.
One factor here was the public revelation on the eve of poll that one of the main Christian Democratic leaders, Josef Bartoncik, had been working for the secret police for 17 years, during which time he had informed against members of the Charter 77 civil rights movement, in which many of the OF/VPN luminaries, as well as President Vaclay Havel, had been centrally involved. Bartoncik had, so the story goes, been offered immunity from exposure by Havel if he stood down from his position in Christian Democracy. Bartoncik accepted the offer but then reneged on it, leading to Havel's decision to authorise public exposure.
However the KDU/KDH's failure has other reasons -they had been slipping in the polls even before the exposure of Bartoncik. Their East German counterparts, whose success they no doubt hoped to emulate, had the decisive argument of West German Chancellor Kohl's deutschmarks at their disposal.
The KDU/KDH however, had to rely on the purely spiritual appeals of Christian morality and the defence of the Czech and Slovak peoples against the horrors of homosexuality, pornography and abortion flooding in from the West. Especially in the Czech Lands, where the KDU got 8-9 per cent, the news fell on stony ground. Even a visit from Pope John Paul II in April failed to help.
The OF/VPN rather than the Christian Democrats was probably the party most identified in the voter's minds with the "West' not only in the sense of economic reintegration into the world markel, but also with an idealised vision of a tolerant, pluralist "Westem" society. This progressive
"Gentle revolution' defeated stalinism but left questions unanswered side of OF/VPN is underlined by the fact that, as the votes for the Greens, and the Social Democratic and Socialist Parties declined, so the OF/VPN vote rose.
The KSC will have been pleased with its result, which makes it 'the party of constructive opposition in the new parliament. Its voting base is the still really existing bureaucracy, armed forces and police, plus pensioners from all these, and some support in rural areas, where the power structures have been less shaken than in the towns. Its best result was in Central Bohemia where it got 18 per cent.
The KSC will be hoping to pick up further support from sectors immediately threatened by imminent economic liberalisations. It is also hoping to place itself at the centre of a left regroupment, as the only left party to have got above the 5 per cent of the votes needed to be represented in the federal parliament. The Social Democratic Party and the Czech Socialist Party both failed the 5 per cent test, as did the Greens.
Nonetheless the KSC's historic responsibility for the present crisis will mean that other left forces will remain profoundly and rightly suspicious of its motives and objeclives.
People with a sense of history will know that much of the KSC's present rhetoric about respecting democratic rights and genuine collaboration with other forces can be matched almost word for word from the party's propaganda from the post-war period, before the takeover of monopoly power (the introduction of "socialism') in 1948.
The results in Slovakia were strikingly different from those in the Czech Lands, and of central importance for the future. Slovak national claims have traditionally been SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 26, July-August 1990
treated with dismissive condescension by the Czechs. Professor Masaryk, the first president of independent Czechoslovakia, considered Slovakia 'the natural area for Czech economic expansion' and under Masaryk's First Republic the existence of Slovakia as a separate nation was officially denied.
Things did not improve under the Stalinist regime, with a ferocious campaign against 'Slovak bourgeois nationalism" in the 1950s. Despite federalisation in 1969 - a belated result of the 1968 reforms - the Slovak sense of being treated as an appendage has led to a powerful upsurge of nationalism. In these elections the openly pro-independence Slovak Nationalist Party got 11 per cent of the vote, but all the parties, including the VPN ran on an overtly pro-Slovak ticket.
The Slovak question also entails a Hungarian question. Slovakia formed a part of the Hungarian kingdom until 1918 and some 300,000 Hungarians still live in Slovakia. Anxious about the possible consequences of a rise in Slovak nationalism, within which right wing and clerical currents have historically always dominated, many Hungarians voted for a 'party of the minorities' whose leading figure Miklos Duray is ideologically in tune with the OF/VPN.
The great unspoken issue in the election was the economy. The lack of discussion of this was a product of the unanimity of all the political parties on the need for reintegration of Czechoslovakia into the world market. In carly July major price rises will be introduced, with a compensatory rise in wages. State firms are being broken up into 'rational units" which, in the absence of other sources of supply will have to make arrangements with Westem - and above all West German - firms to survive.
Groups of workers will be hoping that such arrangements will lead to higher living standards and a secure future. Yet the first step towards making any deal with a Western firm will be significant productivity improvements in the new, smaller, "rational units". Often the workers will exercise their current strength in the enterprises to choose capable managers able to ensure the survival of their enterprise.
The goverment, learning from the experience of surrounding countries, hopes to avoid a catastrophic transition, offering compensatory benefits for social rights that are to be scrapped. For example, women, instead of being legally entitled to a place for their children in (low quality) state nurseries, will be offered a financial benefit to use, either to pay for a nursery or stay at home. This will be a popular measure, at least as long as inflation doesn't catch hold, devastating the value of wages and benefits paid in Czechoslovak crowns. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 26, July-Auqust 1990
FEATURES
The danger is that, in the process of providing a 'choice", the currently existing right will disappear in the framing of the new constitution that will be the first task of a new parliament. Those wishing to oppose the negative effects of the changes will have to negotiate a narrow course between the Scylla of the world market and the Charybdis of appearing to call for the restoration of the discredited system of bureaucratic planning
There is also sure to be resistance - for example there are already reports of opposition amongst transport trade unions to planned fare rises.
An issue that the new government will not be able to escape is the problem of what to do about the secret police and their files. The Bartoncik affair shows that there is plenty of dynamite under the chairs of many in responsible positions; and it also shows how a revelation at the right moment can serve electoral ends. Only a firm decision either to destroy or open all the files can clear the air.
Other controversies are certain to explode if the OF/VPN decide to make a coalition or rely on parliamentary collaboration with the Christian Democrats. The KDU/KDH will almost certainly push the idea of a restriction on abortion rights as a price for its collaboration. However Havel's move in reinstating Slovak ex-communist Marian Calfa as prime minister suggests that he continues to believe in an attempt to sustain an implicit historic compromise with the pro-reform wing of the KSC.
The question of the right of 40,000 Vietnamese - already the object of racist attacks by skinheads - to stay in the country will show whether the leaders of the OF/VPN are really serious about humanist principles.
Here also all is not lost. On May 13 Antonin Hrazdira, the Czech regional interior minister was fired for "passivity in the face of aggression against gypsies and Vietnamese*, an example of serious concem over racist at-
FIX YOUR OWN TRATE SEMEN DAMN COFFEE! CLECHOSLONAKIAN
COMMUNIT PARTY POLITBURO tacks which might be usefully studied by some of the Western goverments that are now lavishing advice on "democracy" to Easter Europe.
It seems certain that the line of divide on these and many other questions will cut directly through the Civic Forum and Public against Violence. Even before the elections there were controversies in the government over economic policy between the finance minister Vaclav Klaus, who wants an immediate transition to a market economy and Vladimir Komarck who shows some concern for the social costs.
This division will become much more profound as the economic changes get under way. In a round about way this controversy reflects the conflict belween the democratic potential of the mass mobilisations of November and December, and the undemocratic plans and elitist instincts of the archmarketisers who control many of the key positions in the OF/VPN movement and the government.
Controversy over the economy will also lead to a sharper questioning of the undemocratic structure of the OF/VPN movement, where ultimate power resides in the hands of an unelected coordinating committee in Prague. Petr Kuzvart from the Czechoslovak Left Alternative - Movement for a Democratic and Self- Managing Socialism writes:
*When we look at the different forces within Civic Forum, it is probable that this imposing political force is going to be tom apart, or, at minimum, that it will be reduced by the split of left-wing elements, as well as by groups from the political centre of right' (International Viewpoint no 188, July 3 1990)
In any case these elections open a further stage, and in no way the end of, a profound turbulence in Czechoslovakia, a turbulence that will not fail to send waves through the whole of Europe.
Page 33
It seems as though food is becoming more and more dangerous these days. Bovine Spon- giform Encephalopathy (BSE) or *Mad Cow Disease' is just the latest in a long line of scares over what we are being sold along with our dinners. These scares raise a number of issues. The most obvious one is what is the govemment doing about it, and although many people have asked this question, the answers are never very satisfactory. The Tory philosophy of the free market when ex- tended to food safety and hygiene doesn't seem to quite work. The salmonella in eggs scare has died down, but the danger still exists and will continue to exist until battery hens are not fed the remains of their relations. What was never taken very seriously was Edwina Currie's declara- tion that 90 percent of egg production was infected. But what this means is that the chicken sold every day is almost certainly infected with salmonella. BSE is a prime example of evading the real issue. How can British beef ever be seen to be safe when cattle cake is still made with the remains of sheep in it? And why has nothing been said about Scrapie, the version of BSE found in sheep which has been around in the meat on sale in shops for years. More interest- ing still is the question of why both scrapie and BSE are almost exclusively British dis cases. There are however other questions to be asked. Why do our farmers feed their livestock food unsuitable for them anyway? A major factor has to be economic. It is cheaper to keep chickens in battery farms and feed them waste from the last generation than to let them roam free and feed them grain, even at the ex- pense of safety. The Thatcher government, in the unconvincing guise of John Gummer, refuses to take responsibility for the problems and instead insists that food is safe even when the evidence is to the contrary. With green issues high on everyone's agenda at the moment, providing food safety Paqe 34
FEATURES VENISON "Lovely grub" - but what's in it? and what has it been in? paramount importance. But if farmers are also expected to provide cheap, plentiful food then who should decide what comes first? over safety. First by drastically cutting the number of health checks to monitor farms. Second by not providing sufficient compensation for farmers whose stock is affected by disease, so often the only way for farmers to maintain that livelihood is to sell the diseased stock as healthy produce. just chickens and cows. Insecticides and chemical fertilisers for crop growing have also been found to cause some adverse effects when eaten. Intensive farming techniques and not rotating crops drain the soil of nutrients and makes it unusable without fertilisers. found in orange squash have been found to exacerbate hyper-activity in children. And allergies to food additives are very common. that they affect only a small proportion of the population. Generally healthy adults are not at risk (although this may be different with BSE)
Food for thought? by Kate Ahrens Bee! is safe. and without damaging the environment is of smaller produce. This government has decided on cheapness But this problem is more widespread than Additives, particularly food colourings The key to all these different situations is crossing the road!
and therefore the government feels no obligation to do any- thing Food in this country has been cosmetically always dressed up. Fruit has been waxed for years in order to make it look nice whilst pos sibly disguising flaws and certainly adding wax to your food. Canned peas have green food colouring in them to look more make them "natural'. Because this has been the norm for so long. a great many of the dangers of modem farming and food producing techniques are overlooked, and we merrily munch our way through ap ples, carrots or tomatoes without giving a thought to the poisons we are swallow- ing with them. Organic food has started to become a serious altemative, although it is often prohibi- tively expensive and needless to say, suffers in looks when compared to the cosmetically doctored food. The market cannot hope to deal with this problem as it is hopelessly ill equipped for changing people's buying habits away from cheap good-looking food to expensive, If food scares are to become a thing of the past, then certain requirements must be met. a) compensation for diseased crop and livestock must be adequate b) information for the consumer about fresh produce must be displayed in the same way as packaged food c) comprehensive testing of chemical fer- tilisers and insecticides must be instituted d) a higher budget should be allocated for health checks of farm premises e) govemmental measures must be brought in to ensure that organic farming becomes the rule rather than the exception. In order for these measures to become fully effective the only answer is nationalisa- tion of agribusiness under consumers and producers democratic control. The farming business has for too long been concerned with profits before safety and the cology. Without this, food scares can only become more widespread and eating a square meal could soon become more dangerous than SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 26, July-August 1990
Arenas for