Blog 45: 20 years later in Czech Republic

Time Magazine posted a story about the 20 year anniversary of the fall of communism in the Czech Republic.

"Thousands of people in the capital, Prague, plan to participate in a reenactment of a student protest — an evocation of the event that triggered the Velvet Revolution that peacefully toppled the communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia."

Although police tried to smash the student protest (which is not very peaceful in my opinion) they failed. The fall of the Berlin wall was like a domino effect and just a few weeks later, on Dec. 29, "Vaclav Havel, a dissident playwright who had spent several years in prison, was elected the country's first democratic president in a half century by a parliament still dominated by communist."

This was a good example of a peaceful transition and the country has been pretty stable for the last two decades. The situation is far from perfect, as many citizens are unhappy with the current situation, but at least, they can complain about it now. As a student leader quoted in the story says: "most people might be disgusted by politics, but 20 years ago we gained the essential thing: freedom."