It’s now just over a quarter of a century since December 29, 1989, when the parliament of what was then the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic elected the dissident playwright Vaclav Havel to the presidency. This happened a mere eight months after Havel was released from jail by the communist regime that had imprisoned him for his activities as a human rights defender. Not many world leaders can boast of going from political prisoner to chief of state in the course of a single year.
In the early 1990s, Havel achieved the status of an undisputed moral authority, a living symbol of what …read more
Source: Foreign Policy
