December 29, 1989: Václav Havel elected president for the first time
Václav Havel was elected president exactly 35 years ago, on December 29, 1989, more than a month after the Velvet Revolution began. His election marked the final confirmation of the fall of the totalitarian regime.
In January 1989, Havel was arrested for political reasons, convicted in February, and released on parole in May. At that time, he had no idea he would soon transition from playwright and dissident to president.
There was no doubt about his candidacy—during the Velvet Revolution, he became the face of change and led negotiations with the Communists. Meanwhile, Alexander Dubček, the symbol of the 1968 Prague Spring, was also vying for the position.
Havel, however, faced a handicap: as a Prague intellectual, he was well-known abroad and respected in dissident circles but largely unknown to the wider public. To remedy this, the Civic Forum flooded towns and villages with posters bearing his portrait. Ultimately, the Civic Forum won over public support, and an unprecedented campaign was launched under the slogan Havel to the Castle.
Paradoxically, it was up to Havel to talk Dubček out of running. "I remember that no one could or even dared to persuade him to give up his ambitions," Havel told Karel Hvíždala seventeen years later. "And so, the task finally fell to me. It was one of the most ridiculous tasks I've ever had in my life: a presidential candidate myself, and somewhat reluctantly at that, I had to explain to someone else why they shouldn't run for the office."
An election full of absurdities
The presidential election itself could have been written by a great playwright as an absurdist drama. On December 28, 23 new members were co-opted into the Federal Assembly, and on the same day, Alexander Dubček became its chairman. The following day, Václav Havel was unanimously elected the 9th President of Czechoslovakia, still a socialist republic at the time. In the election ceremony at Prague Castle’s Vladislav Hall, no one voted against him or abstained. Of the 350 deputies, 326 were present, and 93% of those voting had been elected to the Federal Assembly in 1986, which means they had spent their lives on the opposite side from Havel. Later, Havel remarked that he "indeed had a feeling of absurdity."
After the election on December 29, 1989, a Mass was held at St. Vitus Cathedral, where Cardinal František Tomášek gave his blessing to the new president. Antonín Dvořák's Te Deum was performed by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.
