List of Goals by the Civic Forum
Annotation
From the beginning, Civic Forum had to balance two objectives: leading popular protests and negotiating with the regime. In its first week, the Forum concentrated on mobilizing public support for the upcoming general strike. November 26 signified a turning point. That morning, Forum representatives appeared at the first formal round of negotiations with only their original four demands; they had not had time to create a more substantial plan. While the demonstration that afternoon was the largest so far, it was also the most contentious and underscored the volatile nature of popular support. In order to progress, the movement would have to start producing real change through negotiations. That evening Forum members approved their first fully-articulated program, entitled "What we want". The program rejected the one-party state. It was less clear on what should follow, because the people who created it stood for very different interests and potentially conflicting agendas. For example, the program advocated a free-market, competitive system with no state interference, but it also emphasized the importance of equal opportunity and public welfare. Once in power, these conflicts would cause trouble for Civic Forum, but at this point it sufficed that the opposition had a concrete platform to advance in negotiations. It was the ability of the leaders of Civic Forum to successfully balance these two demands that explains how the Czechoslovakian communist regime fell so quickly and why the regime change was so peaceful.
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List of Goals by the Civic Forum
26 November 1989
What We Want
Programatic directives of the Civic Forum
Our country finds itself in a deep moral, spiritual, ecological, social, economic
and political crisis. This crisis is the result of the inactivity of the current political and
economic system. Almost all the mechanisms necessary for society to properly react to
the changing internal and external conditions have been eliminated. For interminable
decades the self-evident principle has not been respected: who has the power must also
carry the responsibility. All three fundamental powers in the state—legislative, executive
and judicial power—have landed in the hands of a narrow ruling group, composed almost
exclusively of CPCz members. Thus the principles of a legitimate state were overturned.
The CPCz monopoly on the occupation of all important positions creates an unfair
vassal system, which cripples the entire society. The people are thus sentenced to play the
role of mere executors of the orders of the powerful. A slew of fundamental human, civic
and political rights are denied to them.
The directive system of the central leadership of the national economy has plainly
failed. The promised reconstruction of the economic mechanism is slow, ineffective and
is not carried out by the necessary political changes.
These problems will not be resolved by a substitution of persons in positions of
power or by the departure of a few politicians from public life.
The Civic Forum is therefore pressing for these program goals:
1. Rights
The Czechoslovak Republic must be a legal, democratic state in the spirit of the
traditions of Czechoslovak statehood and in the spirit of the internationally accepted
principles, expressed above all in the Universal General Declaration of Human Rights
and in the International Pact on Civic and Political Rights.
A new constitution must be worked out in this spirit, in which the relationship
between the citizens and the state in particular will be revised in detail. This constitution
must, of course, be only accepted by a newly elected constitutional assembly. The
enforcement of civic rights and freedoms will be reliably ensured by a developed system
of legal guarantees. An independent judiciary must also constitute a constitutional and
fair judiciary.
It will be necessary to gradually make the whole Czechoslovak legal
establishment consistent with these principles, and ensure that it will be committed not
only to the citizens, but also to the organs and functionaries of the state.
We insist on righting the wrongs done in the past as a result of politically
motivated persecutions.
2. The Political System
We demand fundamental, effective and lasting changes in the political system of
our society. We must create anew or renew the democratic institutions and mechanisms,
which will enable the real participation of all citizens in public affairs and at the same
time will become an instrumental barrier against the abuse of political and economic
power. All existing and newly created political parties and other political and social
groups must have the same opportunities to partake in the free elections of all the
representational bodies. It is assumed, however, that the CPCz, will relinquish its
constitutionally ensured leading role in our society and its monopoly over the media.
Nothing stands in its way of carrying this out as early as tomorrow.
Czechoslovakia will be an equal union of both nations and all nationalities,
observing the principles of a federative state order.
3. Foreign Policy
We are striving for our country to once again occupy a worthy place in Europe
and in the world. We are a part of Central Europe and we want to therefore maintain good
relations with all of our neighbors.
We are counting on inclusion into European integration. We want to subordinate
our policy toward our partners in the Warsaw Pact and COMECON to the idea of the
“Common European home.” We respect our international legal obligations while fully
reserving our state sovereignty. Meanwhile, we want to revise the agreements motivated
by the excessive ambitions of the leading representatives of the state.
4. The National Economy
We must abandon the current economic system. It takes away the desire to work
and wastes its results, plunders the natural resources, destroys the environment and
increases the total backwardness of Czechoslovakia. We are convinced that this economic
system is impossible to improve through partial improvements.
We want to create a developed market, not deformed by bureaucratic interference.
Its successful functioning is contingent on the breaking of the monopoly on the positions
in today=s big businesses, and the creation of true competition. The latter can only be
created on the basis of a parallel, equal existence of different types of ownership and the
gradual opening of our economy to the world.
The state will, of course, retain in the future a series of irreplaceable functions. It
will ensure universal economic conditions equal for all, and undertake macro-economic
regulatory policies with the intent to contain inflation, the growth of foreign debt and
impending unemployment. Only the state can guarantee the indispensable minimum of
public and social services and the protection of the environment.
5. Social Justice
Decisive for us, is that conditions be created in the society for the development
and the assertion of everyone’s ability. The same conditions and the same opportunities
should be provided for all.
Czechoslovakia must be a socially just country in which people receive aid in old
age, sickness and difficult situations. An important precondition for such a society,
however, is a prosperous national economy.
Churches, communities, businesses and various state volunteer organizations can
contribute to the creation of a vivid network of social services. Thus the possibilities for
the assertion of a rare sense of human solidarity, responsibility and love for one’s
neighbor will be expanded. These humanist principles are necessary for the cementing of
our society.
6. The Environment
We must all look for a way to renew the harmony between the people and the
environment. We will strive for a progressive repair of the damages which we have
inflicted upon nature for the last several decades. We will try to restore our countryside
and our dwellings to their original beauty, to ensure better protection of nature and
natural resources. We will accomplish in the shortest possible time a significant
amelioration in the basic conditions of human life: we will try to ensure quality drinking
water, clean air and uncontaminated food. We will press for a fundamental amelioration
in the system of environmental care which will be aimed not only at liquidating the
current sources of pollution, but first of all at preventing further damages.
We will, at the same time, change the composition and objective of the national
economy, and thus decrease in particular the consumption of energy and raw materials.
We are aware that this will lead to sacrifices that will touch every one of us. All this
requires a change in the hierarchy of values and in our lifestyle.
7. Culture
Culture can not be only something for the artists, scholars and teachers, but a way
of life for the entire civic society. It must be extricated from the chains of any ideology
and must overcome the artificial separation from world culture. Art and literature can not
be limited and must be provided many opportunities for publication and contact with the
public.
We will put science and scientific work in the place where it belongs in society.
We will rule out its naive and demagogic overestimation, as well as its degraded position
which makes it a tool of the ruling party.
A democratic school system should be organized on humanist principles, without
a state monopoly on education. Society must respect teachers in any type of school and
must provide them with a space where they can assert their personality. It is necessary to
return to the universities the rights, which ensure their independence and the freedom of
the academic soil, and this for professors and students alike.
We consider the education of society to be the most valuable national asset.
Upbringing and education must lead to independent thought and morally responsible
discussion.
This is what we want. Our program today is concise, we are working, however, on
making it more concrete. The Civic Forum is an open coalition of citizens. We therefore
call on all who can contribute to this task to do so.
In Prague on 26 November 1989—6:00 p.m..
[Source: Ustav pro sodobe dejiny (USD), Akademie ved Ceske republiky (AV CR),
Koordinacní centrum Obcanskeho fora (KC OF) Archive, file Dokumenty OF.]
Credits
The Civic Forum, "List of Goals," 26 November 1989, Cold War International History Project, Documents and Papers, CWIHP (accessed May 14, 2008).