CZECHOSLOVAKIA The political game begins THE organization of the mass movement in Czechoslovakia showed a sharp rise at the end of November. More than 900 local committees of the Civic Forum (CF) had then been set up, and 7,200 factory strike committees had been formed. The relatively autonomous student movement is also highly structured with an elected leadership representing all the strike committees in the country. Moreover, the movement exists on a nationwide basis, even if until now liaison with Prague seems to have been limited and difficult. This has largely been made possible by the activity of the students who have gone all over the country to explain their movement to the people, who, until the Friday preceding the general strike he was discredited in their eyes, then with Marian Calfa, the new Prime Minister, it got a government that this time had a majority of non-CP members.
The CF's main tactic has been to get a transitional government acceptable to it, which could organize free elections (that is, with freedom to put forward candidates) for no later than July 1990 (Calfa has expressed a preference for the end of June). Their hope, obviously, is that the CzCP will then be definitively and democratically put in a minority position. Recent events show that the CF intends to put itself forward at these elections?. This could pose a certain number of problems — how are radically different opinions on the major choices facing society going to be expressed within the CF current? This will imply that so as not to put itself in a minority, each component will have to stand in the name of the CF. Of course, all this remains uncertain, because the more the dehates develon the more the CF is the debates develop, the more the CF is itself going to be exposed to numerous pressures, and the experience of government will be a major test.
It should be stressed that this movement has only existed for some weeks. Any activist current would have a lot of trouble in linking itself up rapidly with such a massive and spontaneous movement. But, this said, the social composition of the CF leadership limits today its organizational capacities. The CF is made up of intellectuals, artists, journalists, ex-dissidents, etc., and this does not permit it to turn rapidly towards the militant workers in the factories.
### Leading personalities dominate Civic Forum
Moreover, the CF does not have, at present, the structure of an organization, a party, and, consequently, cannot be organized in a democratic way. It is leading personalities of the CF who play the central role, whilst the amount of control the rank and file have over them is very limited. The decision to enter the government is characteristic of decisions taken "from above". But it would be wrong to think that these figures do not more or less reflect the general feeling. They remain the unchallenged leadership of the mass movement, even if this could be called into question as a result of their secret negotiations with the government.
The liberalization of the media remains partial. The bulk of the party press remains entirely controlled by the conservatives (see interview with Václav Havel page 5). The democratic movement has not yet been able to build its own mass press. Cer1. At Bratislava, in Slovakia, the equivalent of the Civic Forum calls itself "The Public Against Violence". 2. The Civic Forum and "The Public Against Violence" will present themselves at the elections as a coalition of all the democratic forces within society, with a common list. Each group or political party would have the opportunity to participate in this coalition.