Communists Lose Majority In Czech

Region's Cabinet; Talks Resume on

National Government
Article from:The Washington Post Article date:December 6, 1989 Author:
Dan Morgan
The Communist Party's monopoly on power came to an endtoday in
Czechoslovakia's largest state when nine non-Communists,
including several political neophytes, were named to the 17-member
cabinet of the Czech region.

The shake-up was announced after four days of negotiations

between party officials and top representatives of Civic Forum,
Czechoslovakia's mass democratic movement. Vaclav Klaus, an
economist and leading strategist for Civic Forum, called the results
"a step in the right direction."

While the new Czech cabinet was the first since 1948 to have a non-
Communist majority, most of the key positions remained in the
party's hands. These included the posts of prime minister, first
deputy prime minister and the ministries of finance, interior and
agriculture. Four other posts went to the Socialist and People's
parties, Communist allies that have recently begun to show signs of
independence.

The Czech republic covers the territories of Bohemia and Moravia

where two-thirds of the country's 15 million people live. The
republic's government has considerable authority over most local
matters.

In a demonstration of its new power, Civic Forum presented four of

the non-party cabinet ministers at a press conference late today.

Dagmar Buresova, a Prague attorney who will become the Czech

minister of justice, said she would work to see that judges base their
decisions "on the letter of the law and their own conscience."

Bedjic Moldan, describing himself described these talks tonight as

"very complicated."

The developments of the last few days have suggested to some

observers that the Czechoslovak party is attempting to save itself
from the serious difficulties now being experienced by Communist
parties in Poland, Hungary and East Germany.

Czechoslovak Communist Party spokesman Josef Hora said the

party "wants to protect its position as a mass organization." But that
appears increasingly difficult in the face of widespread resignations
and radio reports of some party organizations dissolving
themselves.

Borrowing a leaf from Soviet-style glasnost, Hora acknowledged at a

press conference today that there had been widespread
resignations since the Nov. 17 police attacks on demonstrators in
Prague. He said 10 percent of the party members in the Prague
area had quit. While Hora did not give figures, his remarks indicated
that as many as 15,000 have left the party in the capital alone. In
other regions counted, Hora said, an additional 4,953 have quit.

Party officials hoping to breathe new life into the Communist cause
indicated today that they are counting on the return of many of the
400,000 to 500,000 former members who left or were expelled after
the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of the country.

At the same time, the party is pushing a new "action plan" with
proposals for making the party a more democratic, law-abiding
organization to provide "ideological and organizational revival,"
according to the plan's chief author, Jan Siroky. But Siroky
acknowledged at the party press conference today that such a
revival would be "not a work of just a few days."

Siroky said that a transition was underway to "a new model of

government," but he stressed that this transition could not be made
"in a kind of jump" and that the party had responsibilities for society
in the interim.

So far there has been no sign in Czechoslovakia of the kind of

wholesale leadership collapse that led to the resignation last
weekend of East Germany's entire ruling party Politburo and Central
Committee. Instead, there have been signs that the party is
attempting to hold onto some authority while making concessions
where necessary.

State television reported today that President Gustav Husak, whose

resignation has been demanded by Civic Forum, had ordered an
amnesty for nine political prisoners and a halt to criminal
proceedings against six others.