Czech government preparing for civil war? By Ken Biggs PRAGUE - Stanislav Gross, the 30-year-old aptly named interior minister in the Czech Republic's Social Democratic government, is an ambitious career politician who became a Member of Parliament at the age of 23 and leader of the Social Democratic parliamentary group at 27. Whether or not Gross survives in the post to which he was appointed earlier this year depends very much on his handling of the 55th annual IMF/World Bank conference in Prague this month. There have been three demonstrations this year in Prague when Gross's riot police have brutally dispersed small protests by mostly young anti-globalization protesters. These were clearly dress rehearsals by the police for September. The government and right-wing controlled borough councils in Prague have been pulling out all the stops to increase tension in the Czech capital in the run-up to the conference. Even President Vaclav Havel has criticized the atmosphere of impending "civil war," which the media and the government have been busily cultivating. Apart from announcing that 11,000 police will be mobilized for the conference, with troops standing in reserve, the powers-that-be have given Prague schoolchildren the week off and there are even plans to evacuate pensioners to the country! Householders and shopkeepers in the borough where the conference will be held have received leaflets advising them to board up their windows and, if possible, to leave town for the week. Some 600 foreign "specialists" have been brought in to lend a helping hand with the preservation of "law and order," and a group of the Czech police's top brass have been on a training course in the United States. Needless to say, the newly-opened Prague office of the globalized FBI has also been actively involved in preparations to give "foreign extremists" a warm welcome. On the other side of Gross's barricade are the anti-globalization forces, representing a wide range of organizations, mainly from Europe. Almost 200 events will be held in Prague during the week, focusing on demands like those of the Czech Stop the IMF! coalition, which is calling for cancellation of the debts of developing countries and the countries of central and eastern Europe, the setting up of democratically-controlled international development institutions and taxation of international movements of speculative capital and the transnational corporations. Stop the IMF! is organizing the first rally of the week on Sept. 23, when leaders of the Trade Union Association of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia and the Communist Union of Youth will be among the speakers. The Communists will also be taking part in various discussion forums and distributing thousands of leaflets in English and Czech, highlighting, among other things, the role of the IMF and World Bank in creating "the profound social problems which have emerged in the Czech Republic in the last 10 years." - Ken Biggs is editor of Postmark Prague.
