No source, born digital.
Contributions to Contemporary History is one of the central Slovenian scientific historiographic journals, dedicated to publishing articles from the field of contemporary history (the 19th and 20th century).
The journal is published three times per year in Slovenian and in the following foreign languages: English, German, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Italian, Slovak and Czech. The articles are all published with abstracts in English and Slovenian as well as summaries in English.
Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino je ena osrednjih slovenskih znanstvenih zgodovinopisnih revij, ki objavlja teme s področja novejše zgodovine (19. in 20. stoletje).
Revija izide trikrat letno v slovenskem jeziku in v naslednjih tujih jezikih: angleščina, nemščina, srbščina, hrvaščina, bosanščina, italijanščina, slovaščina in češčina. Članki izhajajo z izvlečki v angleščini in slovenščini ter povzetki v angleščini.
Študija raziskuje vlogo zveznega parlamenta v žametni revoluciji. Z razpadom komunistične partije je zvezni parlament nepričakovano postal ključna ustavna institucija s pomembnimi pooblastili v času hitrih političnih sprememb. Revolucionarno gibanje Državljanski forum je doseglo sprejem zakonodaje, ki mu je omogočila, da je razrešilo precej poslancev in jih s kooptacijo nadomestilo s svojimi kandidati. Ta metoda »čistke« parlamenta je imela daljnosežne posledice za češkoslovaško politično kulturo po novembru.
Ključne besede: Češkoslovaška 1989–1990, parlamentarizem, zvezni parlament, žametna revolucija na Češkoslovaškem
This study looks at the role of the Federal Assembly in the Velvet Revolution. With the disintegration of the communist party, the Federal Assembly became unexpectedly a key constitutional institution with far reaching powers in times of rapid political change. The revolutionary movement Civic Forum forced through a legislation that enabled to recall substantial part of the members of the parliament and replace them by its own candidates through co-optation. This method of “cleansing” of the parliament had far-reaching consequences for the post-November Czechoslovak political culture.
Keywords: Czechoslovakia 1989-1990, Parliamentarism, The Federal Assembly, Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia
The term democratic revolution is an oxymoron. The leaders of the revolution
in 1989 were aware that it was impossible to mobilise masses, improvise and
keep on surprising the opponent and, at the same time, remain democrats.
“We, who fight for democracy, cannot be democrats,” Timothy Garton Ash thus
paraphrased Brecht when characterising the strategy of the Civic Forum.We The People: The Revolution of 89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest,
Berlin & Prague (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 89.
Legally, co-optation means an extension of the number of members of an institution by electing additional members. Sociologically, then, co-optation means integration of a marginal Opposition group into the mainstream. In Czechoslovakia, co-optation was used for all three parliaments and national committees following a proposal by Zdeněk Jičínský, constitutional specialist and dissident, based on roundtable political accords of the second half of December 1989 and early January 1990. Co-optations were to serve as expedient means to remove politically compromised individuals from the representative assemblies and to replace them with members of the two revolutionary movements – the Civic Forum and the Public Against Violence. It thus entailed two intertwined processes of dismissal and co-optation of deputies. The politically pivotal co-optations to the Federal Assembly were exercised in two waves. First, on 28 December 1989, a day before the Presidential election of Václav Havel, over twenty MPs were co-opted including Alexander Dubček who was instantly elected Chairman of the Federal Assembly. Shortly after the dramatic adoption of the bill on the dismissal of deputies, early January 1990 saw the second wave of co-optations that was far more extensive and introduced over 130 additional MPs to the Federal Assembly. The change (officially termed reconstruction) of both national councils and national committees in larger cities proved equally radical. Whilst the co-optations were generally accepted in the Czech lands as a pragatic solution, they faced (ineffective) resistance in Slovakia not merely among Communist deputies, but also within the Opposition.
The following analysis of co-optations is part of a wider research into the
Federal Assembly in 1989–1992 that explores the mechanisms of
“self-parliamentarisation”, a process of gradual emancipation of legislative
vis-à-vis executive power. The study has three objectives. First, it follows
upon the work by Jiří Suk on the revolutionary months at the break of 1989
and 1990.Revolutions of 1989. A Handbook, ed. Wolfgang
Mueller et. al. (Wien: Verlag der Oesterreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 2015), 137–160.Pocta
Zdeňku Jičínskému k 80. narozeninám [Festschrift for Zdeněk
Jičínský on his 80th Birthday], ed. Vladimír
Mikule et al. (Praha: ASPI, 2009), 294–296.
Co-optations fall within a particular Czech political tradition under which
elections were never used in key historical junctures to achieve new
legitimacy. In 1918, at the time of the foundation of Czechoslovakia, the
National Committee and subsequently the National Assembly were established
as revolutionary bodies of political parties. They bore no political
continuity with land assemblies and the Imperial Council. After Munich the
change in geographical and political map was manifested in the so called
short parliament where members from the occupied regions lost mandates, as
did subsequently the members from the Communist Party. After the war the
main political parties recognised the continuity of Presidential office, but
not that of the parliament. The interim national assembly was thus called by
the President by decree. Even though the parties were to again delegate
their deputies, the post-war developments have brought a new understanding
of parliament not as part of the division of power, but as the supreme
constituent of self-government.Národní shromáždění v letech 1945-1948
[The National Assembly in 1945–1948] (PhD diss., Charles University,
2010).Parlament v čase změny – případové studie z
vývoje českého a československého parlamentarismu, ed.
Vratislav Doubek et al. (Praha: Akropolis 2011), 79.
In 1968, during the debates on federalisation, the Czech National Council was
established as the counterweight to the Slovak National Council.Vznik České
národní rady v době pražského jara 1968 a její působení do podzimu
1969 [The Emergence of the Czech Nation Council during the
Prague Spring 1968 and Its Operation until the Autumn of 1969] (Köln:
Index, 1984), 25. Cf. Jiří Hoppe, “Pražské jaro 1968 v parlamentu” [The
Prague Spring 1968 in the Parliament], in Parlament v
čase změny ̶ případové studie z vývoje českého a československého
parlamentarismu [The Parliament at the Time of Change – Case
Studies on the Development of the Czech and Czechoslovak
Parliamentarism], ed. Vratislav Doubek et. al. (Prague: Akropolis,
2011), 101–119.inter alia because “his or her activity
harms the politics of the National Front.” By the 1971 elections, about one
quarter of MPs in the Federal Assembly were thus replaced along with nearly
one half of deputies in the Czech National Council. The Council, due to the
date of its foundation during the hot summer of the Prague Spring, exerted
greater resistance to the post-August leadership. All changes derived
formally from the mandate, albeit quite dubious, arising from the last
elections to the National Assembly in 1964. For instance, Zdeněk Jičínský,
the author of the post-November co-optation, first served as MP in the Czech
National Council and later also in the Federal Assembly, only to lose both
mandates a year later: the process ensued without – even formal – voter
involvement.
The Czechoslovak model of co-optations was not used during the fall of
Communism in any of the countries within the Soviet bloc. Yet all of them
(with the exception of Romania), faced quite similar structural issue: how
to deal with the constitutional legacy of Communism, particularly the
legislative power of the parliament.Communist Legislatures in Comparative
Perspective (New York: State University of New York Press,
1982). Cf. Joachim Amm, Die Föderalversammlung der
CSSR: sozialistischer Parlamentarismus im unitarischen Föderalismus
1969–1989 (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2001).National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity
and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu's Romania (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991).Volkskammer that gained
new legitimacy by the hastily called early elections in March 1990, proved
to be a pivotal institution in the process of German unification.Die Volkskammer der DDR. Sozialistischer
Parlamentarismus in Theorie und Praxis (Wiesbaden:
Westdeutscher Verlag, 2002).
The Federal Assembly that first convened just twelve days after the incident at Národní třída, did not play any role in the first days of the November revolution. The Opposition also ignored it at first, adressing its demands to the Communist Party and the Federal Government. It was Zdeněk Jičínský who helped the demand for the “reconstruction” of the Federal Assembly to be tabled as early as at the second talk between the Civic Forum and Prime Minister Adamec at the Government Presidium on 28 November. Jičínský proposed a constitutional bill on dismissal and co-optation of MPs to be adopted along with the abolition of the leading role of the Communist Party:
“...deputies in the Federal Assembly, the Czech National Council and the Slovak National Council, and representative assemblies at all levels, who compromised their parliamentary pledge and neglected the will and interests of the people, may be dismissed from their posts by the representative assembly which they are members of. The representative assemblies shall elect new members based on nominations presented by the National Front along with the Civic Forum and/or the Public Against Violence. The election shall be carried out by the representative assembly to which the candidate is nominated.”Vladimír Hanzel, Zrychlený tep dějin. Reálné drama o deseti jednáních[An Accelerated Pace of History. Real Drama in Ten Acts] (Prague: OK Centrum, 1991), 47.
Zdeněk Jičínský presented the demand remarkably early on during the
revolutionary negotiations. Just a day after the general strike, the Civic
Forum did not yet have any ambition to enter the government, moreover to
serve at the Federal Assembly. At the time Jičínskýʼs proposal for
co-optations did not lead, to political regrouping of the parliament, but
rather to its cleansing. The aim was to cleanse the parliament and to retain
it operability at the same time. Jičínskýʼs erudition was manifested in the
fact that he realised well before anyone else among the leaders of the Civic
Forum, the risk of spontaneous pressure on resignations of MPs that would
end up blocking the parliament.inter alia,
drafting the Czechoslovak Constitution of 1960, and the Constitutional
Act of 1968.
Jičínskýʼs proposal was not the only means of cleansing the representative
corps. The electoral act from 1971 allowed for dismissal of deputies. A
number of local activists from within the Opposition hoped to use the
instrument.Revolution with a Human Face: Politics, Culture, and
Community in Czechoslovakia, 1989–1992 (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2013), 169-170.Soudobé dějiny
2–3 (1999): 357.
The issue, however, was that the Opposition did not need a “pure” parliament,
but an operational one. Following the dismissal of MPs, the vacated seats
had to be filled again. Constitutional Acts were adopted by a three-quarter
majority of all MPs, not merely of those present.
Therefore, in combination with the ban on majorisation,Občanské fórum,
listopad-prosinec 1989, 2. díl – dokumenty [Civic Forum,
November–December 1992, volume 2: Documents] (Praha, Brno: Doplněk,
1998), 87-88.
The leaders of the Civic Forum realised the significance of the Federal
Assembly on the night of 5 December, at the point when they decided to take
over key Ministries and that Havel would be running for Presidency.Občanské
fórum, 96. Občanské
fórum, 98. Labyrintem revoluce [Through the Labyrinth
of the Revolution] (Praha: Prostor, 2003), 248–250.Občanské fórum, 197.
The Civic Forum soon came to realise that, not only did it not know how to
make the Federal Assembly elect Václav Havel to Presidency, but also that it
had been unable to prevent the other side from using it. During the second
roundtable talks on 11 December, Vasil Mohorita surprised the Civic Forum
when he announced that he would propose to the Federal Assembly a change of
the Constitution in order to introduce direct election of the President. The
Communist Party thus took over the initiative for a while and put the Civic
Forum in a paradoxical situation of a defender of Communist
constitutionalism and opponent of direct democracy. The Communist Party
showed that it was also able to reach for “revolutionary” methods. As Zdeněk
Jičínský emphasised in his response to the proposal, direct election of the
President would not only be in conflict with the existing constitutional
tradition of parliamentary democracy, but would be in utter conflict with
the spirit of the Constitutional Act on Federation of 1968 as it would
enable the Czechs to outvote the Slovaks.Svobodné slovo, December 19, 1989, 3.
Reprinted in Suk, Občanské fórum,
149–150.
The Civic Forum responded to the obstinacy of the parliament by calling mass
demonstrations in front of the Federal Assembly. At the same time it started
to speak of the Federal Assembly within the categories of sin and guilt. The
dismissal of MPs was to become the “most dignified and visible form of
repentance for the past inactivity of the Federal Assembly, not having
prevented the evil. The repentance of the MPs at the Federal Assembly may
thus be manifested by the swiftest possible election of the President.”Občanské
fórum, 230.
Within the last days of 1989 the two parties eventually reached a temporary
compromise on the Constitutional Act on Co-optation of Deputies. It did not
include dismissals of deputies, and merely filled the seats vacated after a
series of resignations. Nevertheless, the Civic Forum continued to expect to
use the model of dismissal of MPs from 1969 after the election of the
President. Yet it did not mention the intention in public or to MPs. During
the meeting of officials of the Civic Forum and the Public Against Violence
on 22 December, Pavel Rychetský, a lawyer and member of the narrowest
leadership circle in the Civic Forum, explained further approach to his
Slovak partners: “It would not be appropriate for Dubček to be the only one
to become MP on Wednesday (28 December). He ought to be among at least ten
or twelve others so that it does not look inappropriate. We intend to sit
down with you [Public Against Violence] to go over the actual
reconstruction. We have put together – I think I can say it here – some kind
of a shooting list of MPs from the Czech lands who simply cannot remain in
their posts.”Občanské fórum, 263.Můj přítel Vladimír Mikule [My
Friend Vladimír Mikule], in Pocta doc. JUDr. Vladimíru Mikulemu k 65.
narozeninám, ed. Oto Novotný (Praha: ASPI, 2002), 473.
Zdeněk Jičínskýʼs role in co-optations requires a brief explanatory note.
Many authors and stakeholders in revolutions see Jičínskýʼs engagement in
co-optations as a revenge for the purges during normalisation. For instance,
the dissident and later Czech Prime Minister Petr Pithart suggests that
Jičínský “could not control himself” and repeatedly stated: “And now we
shall do them what they did to us after August.”Referáty a diskusní příspěvky
přednesené na semináři, který ve dnech 10. a 11. prosince 1994
uspořádala Nadace Heinricha Bölla (Praha: Listy, 1995),
86.
Zdeněk Jičínský was all, but a revolutionary. In November 1989, unlike many
of his reform-minded Communist friends, he did not attempt to reform the
Communist Party. Yet his political and ideological world was deeply marked
by life experience of a reform Communist who fought the aesthetic-political
project of the late Stalinism. That gave rise to his scepticism about
revolutionary heroism, an emphasis on the “effect of time”, as much as his
concern about excessive power of an individual – the cult of
personality.Právo, February 26, 1999.
Non-revolutionary at the core and the only genuine conservative among the
leaders in the Civic Forum, Zdeněk Jičínský saw the November revolution as
an “avalanche”, uncontrolled and dangerous societal movement.Československý parlament [The Czechoslovak
Parliament] (Praha: NADAS – AFGH, 1993), 32.Československý
parlament, 107.Spisy [Collected Works],
vol. 6, ed. Václav Havel (Praha: Torst, 1999), 401.MF Dnes, June 16, 1992,
1.
Milan Šútovec points out how, during the “hyphen war”, the dual understanding
of political time was transformed into an institutional conflict between the
“Presidential time” and “Parliamentary time.”Semióza ako
politikum [Semiosis as Politicum] (Bratislava: Kalligram,
1999), 272–277.parler), the time of Havelʼs Presidency
was fast and dramatic. As opposed to the slow “Parliamentary time” that
draws from its very nature, Havelʼs fast “Presidential time” was not within
the intrinsic nature of the Presidential office, but its “tragic
enhancement”.Semióza ako politikum, 273.
Zdeněk Jičínský, as the defendant of “legal continuity with the Communist
régime” became number one enemy to the post-revolutionary fighters against
Communism. Yet more than legal continuity in terms of permanence or
inviolability of the legal system, Jičínský was more concerned about the
social and state continuity. He argued that, vis-à-vis the revolutionary
avalanche, legality stood as the “cultural method of power” needed for the
preservation of social cohesion. He was also mindful of preservation of the
continuity of state. Here he was guided by his experience of state existence
that could not be taken for granted. The continuity of state was based on a
political accord between the two national representatives, expressed at the
time in the act on Czechoslovak federation. The federalisation of 1968 was
thus not “merely administratively complex a method of totalitarian
governance”, as stated by Václav Havel at the Federal Assembly on 23 January
1990, but it was a manifestation of recognition of equality of the Slovak
people.Spisy [Collected Works], vol. 6,
ed. Václav Havel (Prague: Torst, 1999), 33. Cf. Jičínský, Československý parlament, 24–28.
To Zdeněk Jičínský the Federal Assembly thus represented a central institution that held the state together and guaranteed the legality of the radical political changes. Apart from the constitutional legality, however, the Federal Assembly also required revolutionary legitimacy to be supplied by the co-optations. Other means of parliamentary legitimation that were available – the extensive by-elections, or even the swift early elections – would only jeopardise the role of the Federal Assembly as the only stable institution standing strong to the “revolutionary avalanche.”
The path from the first to the second wave of co-optations did not prove entirely smooth. On the one hand, there was the process of “self-parliamentarisation” that accelerated within the Federal Assembly, particularly in its presidium, which meant an awareness among MPs that they held legislative power and responsibility. Apart from the election of Václav Havel for Presidency which was a clear legitimisation of the mandates acquired in the 1986 “elections”, an additional factor was, paradoxically, the first wave of co-optations. That brought to the parliament some familiar figures of the revolution, particularly Alexander Dubček.
At the presidium of the Federal Assembly on 28 December 1989, Anton Blažej,
MP expressed the new parliamentary self-confidence when he reminded his
colleagues their new constitutional power and responsibility: “Do not give
in to those moods, depression and manifest resignations on mandates, because
it is to be in our interest that this body is functional. It has to be in
operation until the elections and we are required to provide for the
preparation of the elections ... It means that the Opposition also ought to
be interested in the functioning of this body.”st session (December 28, 1989).
The general political agreement on the second wave of co-optations was
reached during roundtable talks in the Valdstein Palace on 5 January.
The draft bill on dismissals of MPs was first debated in committees. Those
were the fora to which the MPs were accustomed to, even during the previous
régime, to table critical objections or proposals for amendments. Similarly
to the Communist era, the debate at the committees again largely
supplemented the absent plenary debate. The formulation of the bill that
enabled the dismissal of MPs who, “because of their hitherto activities do
not offer guarantees for the development of political democracy” was the
source of major indignation. For instance, an MP at the Committee for
Industry, Transport and Trade stated that it was unclear “what is the
measure to ascertain who does and who does not offer guarantees for
democracy ... How can those things be measured?”
The matter, however, did not merely involve the issue of methodology – how to define the “errors” of MPs,th joint session (January 22,
1990).th joint
session (January 17, 1990).th joint session
(January 22, 1990). Cf. Committee resolution No 153.th joint
session (January 16, 1990).
The parliaments of the two republics in the federation also addressed the
co-optations. On the one hand, they themselves went through the
co-optational “cleansing”. On the other hand, the issues of national
committees fell within their powers. Whilst not a single critical voice was
raised in the Czech National Council, on 12 January 1990 the Slovak National
Council held an extensive, largely critical debate on the bill. Part of MPs
criticised the fact that the bill eliminated the representative nature of
the parliament. One of the MPs, a representative of the Slovak Union of
Women, pointed out that not a single woman was among the 22 co-opted
deputies for the Federal Assembly and that only a single woman was co-opted
in place of the three female MPs that stepped down. She argued that the main
reason behind this was the fact that interest groups were removed from the
selection of new MPs.
A question arises about why the co-optations encountered greater resistance
in Slovakia.Mladá fronta: “It is obvious where the
former mafia is stronger than the reform. It seems that the situation in
Slovakia is by no means the same as we feel it here, say in Prague. It is
more complex.”Mladá fronta,
January 24, 1990, 1.Listy 5 (2007): 19–33.
The first post-revolution session of the Federal Assembly on 29 November was
broadcasted live at the Czechoslovak Television. Whatever the presidium of
the Federal Assembly hoped to gain from the broadcast, it certainly did not
achieve any political or media success. As Tomáš Zahradníček showed, the
revolution and the television as a medium preferred images of unmediated
power, full squares and a leader figure, instead of the slow, often chaotic
proceedings, tied by internal regulations, held by a few hundred elderly men
and women of the past.th session (December 13, 1989).
The televised broadcasts not only helped to shape as well as distort
parliamentary developments, but also archived them. They helped to preserve
one of the most bizarre days of the Velvet Revolution that was drawing to an
end. On Tuesday 23 January from 10am channel one of the Czech Television
presented live broadcast of the debate within the 22nd session of the Houses of the Federal Assembly. The first on
agenda was the debate on the bill on dismissal of MPs.nd joint session of the Federal Assembly,
see Archive and Programme Funds of the Czech Television, Sessions of the
Federal Assembly, January 23, 1990.We The People, 111.
Zappa had chosen, though utterly by chance, a perfect day to visit the Federal Assembly. The day that saw two major events in the history of Czechoslovak parliamentarism. The Federal Assembly, for the first time ever, failed to adopt draft bill and Václav Havel launched the “hyphen war” with his first address to the Parliament.
Ján Riško, former director of the Czechoslovak Radio and MP at the Federal
Assembly serving unremittingly since 1971, was the one to best use the live
broadcast. Dressed in a smart suit, Riško with his rhetorical mastery and
carefully measured sarcasm outshone all other speakers. His was certainly
the most impressive “counter-revolutionary” speech that the Communist
conservatives dared.Pocta Zdeňkovi Jičínskému k 80. narozeninám, ed. Vladimír
Mikule et al. (Praha: ASPI, 2009), 241.chef-d'oeuvre of
Czechoslovak parliamentarism”, as one in the series of hasty and violent
interferences with the Czechoslovak Constitution.Společná česko-slovenská digitální
parlamentní knihovna [Common Digital Czecho-Slovak
Parliamentary Library], Federal Assembly 1986-1990, Joint Sessions of
the House of People and the House of Nations, Stenographic records,
22nd joint session, January 23, 1990,
accessed October 30, 2015, http://www.psp.cz/eknih/1986fs/slsn/stenprot/022schuz/s022002.htm.
Riškoʼs speech triggered an hour-long unscheduled debate. The MPs were
competing to dismiss the Communist MP. All agreed on that Ján Riško ought to
be silent, for he was silent for twenty years. With the exception of a few
co-opted MPs, the objection applied to all existing MPs none of whom could
pride themselves in a daring speech to the plenary. Yet most of them
believed that they secured their right to speak by having consented to the
post-November developments. “The freedom to consent” was a right that the
MPs earned by conformity, particularly with the election of the President.
The “freedom of consent” thus perceived is similar to the understanding of
freedom by the Communist Party.Řeč komunistické moci” [“The
Communist Power Talk”] (Praha: Triáda, 1998).
Another frequent theme in the criticism of Riškoʼs speech and in defence of
the dismissal of MPs was a claim that the “reconstruction of the parliament”
was a necessary step for “the political composition [of the parliament] to
ideally reflect the political compositions and mentality of the people in
our country.”Společná česko-slovenská
digitální parlamentní knihovna [Common Digital Czecho-Slovak
Parliamentary Library], Federal Assembly 1986-1990, Joint Sessions of
the House of People and the House of Nations, Stenographic records,
22nd joint session, January 23, 1990,
accessed October 30, 2015, http://www.psp.cz/eknih/1986fs/slsn/stenprot/022schuz/s022002.htm.
After the debate Alexander Dubček, being evidently insecure, called the vote.
The bill was passed smoothly in the House of Peoples, with only nine MPs
abstaining. In the crucial House of Nations, however, nearly forty MPs were
absent. Thus, whilst the Czech section passed the bill, albeit with a narrow
margin, three MPs opposed it in the Slovak section (including Ján Riško),
and 22 others abstained. Thus the bill was not adopted. Alexander Dubček,
who chaired the session and the voting following the printed script, first
declared the bill adopted. Only after vocal objections from the Slovak
section, constantly apologising, he started to look for “legislators in the
know” who would be able to resolve the situation in which the Federal
Assembly found itself for the first time in its history. After a few
intermissions and procedural discussionsLabyrintem revoluce,
289–290.
Prior to that, Václav Havel addressed the plenary of the Federal Assembly
with nearly a two-hour long speech.Spisy
[Collected Works], vol. 6, ed. Václav Havel (Prague: Torst, 1999). More
on the address in Šútovec, Semióza ako politikum,
150-163.nd and 23rd
sessions (23 – 30 January) was unable to carry out even the essential
procedural tasks. The presidium of the House of Peoples could not reach a
quorum.
Shortly before 6pm, after the debate on a number of additional points, the
Houses reconvened to debate the bill on dismissal of MPs. Zdeněk Jičínský
reviewed the deliberations of the Conciliation Committee. He informed that
the failure to adopt the bill was caused by the discontent of independent
MPs with the formal procedure in debating the bill that was unrelated to the
content of the draft bill. He then appealed to the Slovak MPs who first
abstained, to assume a clear position either in support of or against the
bill. No one abstained in the subsequent voting, with only a single MP
voting against. The parliament did not yet have the voting equipment, what
was explicable given the hitherto method of voting. It is therefore
impossible to estimate the number of MPs voting for the bill. Television
footage shows that some MPs, such as Ján Riško, did not vote at all. The
smooth adoption of the bill in the second round of voting suggests that the
Slovak MPs did not try to block the bill, but tried to firmly protest
against the misuse of the parliament. They fought for the right of the
parliament to consent (procedurally accurately), the right to being taken at
least as seriously as was case of the Communist parliament and, eventually,
for the right of MPs to consider their hitherto public activities
meaningful. After the adoption of the bill on dismissal of the MPs the
agenda of the 22nd session was summarily
debated. The televised broadcast from the Federal Assembly closed with an
image of MPs from the House of People leaving the parliament forever, others
who might return in a week to elect over hundred and thirty new colleagues.
The sensitive microphones of the state Czechoslovak Television captured
their mutual farewells.
The co-optations significantly changed the status of the parliament in the
post-November distribution of power. The institute of roundtable talks
disintegrated and the parliament became the central (though not exclusive)
platform for political negotiations. The aforementioned process of
“self-parliamentarisation” has accelerated considerably, i.e. the
emancipation of the legislature vis-à-vis the executive power. The “hyphen
war” that broke out instantly after the co-optations was thus waged in the
parliament, and not behind the political scenes or on the street. The side
effect of the shift from roundtable talks to parliamentary debates resulted
in a deep plunge in the influence of small political parties within the
National Front: with their meek parliamentary fractions and mediocre
electoral perspectives, they could not compete with the far more numerous
and prospective parliamentary fractions of the Civic Forum and the Communist
Party. Together with the outer position of the parliament within the
structure of the power, the inner running of the Federal Assembly as an
institution changed as well. Though the co-optations changed nearly a half
of MPs, the key bodies of the Federal Assembly (the presidium, chairs of
committees) experienced far deeper change. The two thirds of members of the
presidium of the Federal Assembly have been changed; the presidiums of the
Houses have been changed altogether, and the roles of the chairs of the
committees have been changed by 85 percent.Sociologický časopis 28 (1992):
227.
The speed of work at the parliament also rapidly increased as the legislature
convened far more often than under communism and debated far greater number
of bills. That is also related to yet another internal transformation – the
development of the rules of procedure appropriate for a parliament that was
no longer under the oversight of the Communist Party, but one that had to
itself regulate its internal disagreements. Even though the new rules of
procedure were only adopted in the subsequent parliamentary term, the change
in debating the bills followed soon after the co-optations. The initiative
presented by Vladimír Mikule proved particularly important. He achieved, inter alia, that each amendment had to be first
discussed in the Constitutional-Legal Committee prior to being voted
on.Československý parlament, 91–92.
Co-optations have been a decisive step on the path of the Federal Assembly from the Communist parliament to the liberal one that only emerged after the elections in June 1990. It was still the first step, as the vital regional principle remained in place until the elections in June 1990 (i.e. the MPs represented their constituency). It was also because the Civic Forum was shaping itself as a representative body of all social strata without any significant differentiation of political currents. It was only the disintegration of the parliamentary fraction of the Civic Forum nearly a year later brought the process to completion. By giving political parties and movements an opportunity to choose new MPs, co-optations also contributed to the introduction of the proportional electoral system and created conditions for the emergence of strong party democracy.
From the wider Central European perspective, the main consequences of the
co-optations in the Federal Assembly were the institutionalisation and
slowdown of the November revolution. The Velvet Revolution that proved
unique in post-Communist Europe for its pace, turned into “refolution”,We The
People, 14.
Češkoslovaški zvezni parlament, ki je bil ustanovljen leta 1969 v okviru federalizacije Češkoslovaške, je v žametni revoluciji čez dvajset let odigral pomembno in hkrati paradoksalno vlogo. V izpraznjenem oblastnem prostoru, ki ga je v paniki ustvarila komunistična partija Češkoslovaške, je zvezni parlament nenadoma postal ključna in edina institucija, ki bi lahko zagotovila mirno in ustavno preoblikovanje političnega sistema. Opozicijski gibanji (češki Državljanski forum in slovaška Javnost proti nasilju) sta sprejeli komunistično ustavo kot podlago za preoblikovanje, ustavo pa je bilo mogoče spremeniti samo prek zveznega parlamenta.
Ta strategija ni imela verodostojne alternative, saj je imel velik del komunistične in pokomunistične slovaške elite ustavo in zvezni parlament za zgodovinska dosežka. Druge možnosti, na primer vrnitev k češkoslovaški ustavi iz leta 1920, so bile za Slovake popolnoma nesprejemljive. Težava je bila v tem, da so bili poslanci zveznega parlamenta leta 1986 izvoljeni na volitvah v komunističnem slogu, zato jih družba ni imela za legitimne poslance. Zdeněk Jičínský, reformistični komunist, eden od avtorjev ustavnih sprememb iz leta 1968 in vodilni ustavni strokovnjak Državljanskega foruma, se je domislil koncepta »kooptacij«. Nekateri poslanci naj bi odstopili ali bi jih odpoklical parlament, ki bi potem izvolil nove člane iz vrst opozicijskih gibanj.
To bi omogočilo odlog volitev, utrdilo verodostojnost zveznega parlamenta in ohranilo njegovo vlogo stabilne institucije v nemirnem revolucionarnem obdobju. Ta primer ni bil edinstven v sodobni češki zgodovini, v kateri volitve nikoli niso bile uporabljene kot rešitev za politično krizo. Dejansko je bila za zgled čistka novoustanovljenega zveznega parlamenta iz leta 1969 – številni poslanci, ki so bili odstranjeni v tem procesu (predvsem Aleksander Dubček), so se čez dvajset let vrnili v parlament s pomočjo pravzaprav identične zakonodaje. »Kooptacije«, ki so bile na Češkoslovaškem sicer edinstvene, so bile del širšega pojava ustavnih improvizacij v srednji in vzhodni Evropi, kjer so se vse države spopadale s kompleksno ustavno zapuščino komunistične dobe.
Ta študija je del širšega raziskovalnega projekta o zveznem parlamentu v obdobju 1989–1992, ki proučuje mehanizme »samoparlamentarizacije«, tj. procesa postopnega osvobajanja zakonodajnega telesa od izvršne oblasti. Študija ima tri temeljne cilje. Prvič, nadaljuje raziskovanje revolucionarnih sprememb ob koncu leta 1989 in na začetku leta 1990 v smeri , katere začetnik je Jiří Suk, ter z uporabo istih metod in virov (prepisov pogajanj gibanja Državljanski forum, arhivov Državljanskega foruma) proučuje enega od stranskih hodnikov »labirinta revolucije«. Veliko razlagalcev meni, da so »kooptacije« izvirni greh, iz katerega so izšle številne tegobe pokomunistične preobrazbe v devetdesetih letih 20. stoletja. Zato je vredno raziskati, kako so se sprejemale odločitve in ali so bile na voljo tudi verodostojne alternative. Drugič, sama tematika zveznega parlamenta in viri, ki jih ustvaril (zapisniki plenarnih sej, parlamentarnih odborov, predsedstva ali pogovorov s poslanci), nam omogočajo vpogled v žametno revolucijo s perspektive marginaliziranih in poraženih udeležencev.
Boj za nadzor nad parlamentom razkriva dva različna pogleda na spremembe: konceptu moralne in estetske revolucije Václava Havla , ki bi uničila vse grdo in zlo, se je zoperstavil reformni program »paragrafske revolucije« , ki ga je zagovarjal Zdeněk Jičínský ob globokem dvomu v sposobnosti množice in njenih voditeljev. Šlo je za trk dveh političnih obdobij: dinamičnega obdobja revolucije in počasnega premikanja parlamentarne demokracije. Opazujemo lahko tudi svetovni nazor poražencev, tj. parlamentarnih poslancev, ki niso želeli, da jih revolucionarna gibanja zgolj izkoristijo in zavržejo, ampak so hoteli biti del politične preobrazbe. Bojevali so se za pravico, ki jim jo je omogočal celo komunistični režim – pravico do »strinjanja«. To je bilo očitno predvsem med nenavadno parlamentarno razpravo o »kooptaciji«, ki se je nanašala na vprašanje, ali naj parlament odvzame sedež več kot sto svojim poslancem. Prvič v svoji zgodovini zvezni parlament ni sprejel zakona, vendar si je pod pritiskom hitro premislil. Televizija je javno prenašala to razpravo, katere absurdnost je dodatno poudaril nepričakovan nastop zunanjih obiskovalcev: predstavnikov revolucionarnih študentov, ki so zahtevali takojšnjo odobritev zakonodaje, Václava Havla, ki ga je ta parlament nedavno izvolil za predsednika in je s svojim govorom podžgal tako imenovani »spor zaradi vezaja«, in Franka Zappe na parlamentarnem balkonu, ki je snemal dokumentarni film o žametni revoluciji.