Czech Republic: protesters demand prime minister’s resignation
An estimated 250,000 people have demanded the resignation of the Czech Republic’s prime minister in the country’s biggest display of dissent since the 1989 velvet revolution that ended communism in the former Czechoslovakia. In a setting loaded with historical symbolism, demonstrators from across the country crowded into Prague’s Letna park – site of a pivotal protest 30 years ago credited with forcing the communist regime from power – to voice anger over Andrej Babiš, a billionaire leader who campaigned on an anti-corruption platform but has himself become a symbol of perceived malfeasance. Holding Czech flags and placards lampooning the prime minister, the crowd cheered as a succession of speakers called Babiš, a tycoon who is the country’s second richest man, a threat to democracy. But contemporary political concerns were laced with references to the past. Speeches came from a podium close to the Czech interior ministry, which doubled as an interrogation centre for political dissidents during the communist regime. Draped from a neighbouring multi-storey block of flats was a banner with the slogan Truth and Love Must Prevail – a reference to the philosophy of Václav Havel, the playwright and dissident who became president of post-communist Czechoslovakia. Sunday’s protest – the fifth [...]
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