Yearbook 2008
Czech Republic. According to
Countryaah reports, Czech Conservative and EU skeptic
President Václav Klaus was challenged in the February
presidential election by Jan Švejnar, a Czech-American
economist. The two candidates disagreed on several major
political issues. Švejnar argued that the Czech Republic
would move to the euro as soon as possible, while Klaus
wanted to slow down widening EU cooperation. Švejnar saw the
climate issue as a priority, but Klaus dismissed it as
excessive.
The President is appointed by both chambers of
Parliament. Klaus had the strongest support in the Senate
and Švejnar in the Chamber of Deputies. In three rounds of
voting, the elected officials failed to gather a sufficient
number of votes, 140, for any of the candidates. The vote
revealed deep division within Prime Minister Mirek
Topolánek's blue-green government coalition. In the fourth
round, however, Klaus received 141 votes.
The government welcomed the US plans to deploy a radar
base to the Czech Republic which would be part of the
planned robotic defense against possible attacks from, among
others, Iran. But in opinion polls, two-thirds of the Czech
population was against the project. In the small village of
Trokavec where the radar base was to be built, a symbolic
referendum was held when 71 out of 90 voted no. In the
government, the Green Party was critical and there were
opponents in the other coalition parties as well. In foreign
policy, the radar plans created problems in relation to
Russia, which reacted harshly and declared that military
means would be used if the United States established its
robotic shield near the Russian border. There was also
criticism from Germany.
In July, the government signed an agreement with the
United States on the radar, despite the Green Party
requesting that the decision be postponed until the US
receives a new president. The Senate approved the agreement
on the radar base, but in the Chamber of Deputies the issue
would be dealt with after New Year. During the autumn,
elections were held in the regions, which until now were
almost exclusively governed by Prime Minister Topolánek's
Democratic Citizens' Party (ODS). The election became a
major victory for the opposition by winning the Social
Democrats in all regions. The people appeared to be voting
in protest against plans for patient fees in health care and
partly against the radar base. When the Social Democrats won
23 of 27 seats in the Senate election, the government was
considerably weakened. The opposition demanded the departure
of Prime Minister Topolánek, but he remained determined to
lead the Czech Presidency in the EU in the first half of
2009.
Prague - history
According to legend, the city was founded by Princess Libuše, wife of the
plowman Přemysl, the ancestor of the first Czech princely dynasty. From
900-t. Prague was established as the capital of Bohemia, and the city became the
973 episcopal see. Opposite the castle district Hradčany arose from the
1000-t. on the right bank of the river Staré Město and north of the Jewish
Quarter. The first stone bridge over the Vltava, Judith's Bridge, was built in
1172. Migrating German merchants and artisans contributed from the 1200's, to the
growth of the city. Prague experienced its first heyday under Emperor Charles
IV, when the city became the center of the German-Roman Empire. A university,
the first in Central Europe, was established in 1348, Charles Bridge was built,
and a new neighborhood, Nové Město, was founded south and east of Staré Město. After
Charles' death, religious and social tensions increased in Prague. The Czech
priest Jan Hus preached against the decay of the church, and when his followers
received the king's support at the university, the Bavarians, Saxons and Poles
emigrated from there in 1409. In 1419 a group of radical Hussites stormed the
town hall of Nové Městos and threw a number of councilors out of a tower window.
the first defenestration. It triggered the Hussite revolution, in which Prague
became the headquarters of the movement's moderate faction. The wars
strengthened the nobility and the citizens at the expense of the church and the
Czech population element against the predominantly Catholic Germans.
The city experienced a new heyday in the late 1500's, under Rudolf II, who
made it a magnet for artists and scientists, Tycho Brahe. After Rudolf's
abdication as king of Bohemia in 1611, however, the court moved again to Vienna.
From 1526, when the Catholic Habsburgs took over the Bohemian crown, the
pressure on the Protestant Bohemian estates increased steadily. And when
rebellious estate representatives in 1618 threw two imperial officials out of
the castle windows, the Thirty Years' War was triggered. The army of the
Bohemian estates was defeated at the Battle of the White Mountain in 1620, a
little east of Prague, and in June 1621, 27 rebels were executed on Staré Městos
town hall square. Thus, the Bohemian uprising was crushed. Prague also became
the scene of acts of war later in the war, in 1648, when Swedish troops
plundered parts of the city. The Catholic triumph was marked in the following
decades with the construction of a number of Baroque churches and aristocratic
palaces in Prague. However, the city long stagnated as a provincial town in the
Habsburg Empire.
In the 1800's, Prague became the natural center of the Czech national
movement, which towards the end of the century completely took control of the
city, as a result of a large Czech population influx in line with
increasing industrialization. Prestigious buildings from this period, such as
the National Theater and the Obecní dům in Art Nouveau style, marked the new
Czech self-awareness; at the same time, a thorough clean-up was carried out in
the Josefov Jewish quarter. In 1918, Prague became the capital of the new state
of Czechoslovakia. With the inclusion of the surrounding suburbs, a Great
Prague was created in 1922. Although the city was the scene of fierce fighting
during an uprising against the Germans in the last days of World War II, it
escaped relatively graciously through the war.
|
