Perhaps stung by sharp falls in popularity in popularity polls, Czech president Vaclav Klaus chose an interview with the Polish weekly Rzeczy to launch an erratic character attack on former Czech president Vaclav Havel. Revered abroad for his humanism as well as his role in leading the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Havel’s star-status abroad has always stood in marked contrast to the image of Czech President Klaus as the enfant-terrible of Central Europe.
In this recent interview, Klaus rather bizarrely calls Havel an extreme leftist bent on destroying the existing human order. Prague’s international airport was recently named after Havel, who died just over a year ago, but it came as little surprise when Klaus failed to appear at the re-naming ceremony.
