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Czech Republic Page |
Welcome to ElectionInfo.com's pages on Czech Republic
Official Name: Czech Republic
Capital: Prague
Area: 78,860 square kilometres ( 30,448 square miles )
Major cities (Population)
Prague 1,212,010 (1991 estimate)
Brno 387,986 (1991)
Ostrava 327,371 (1991)
Plze× 173,008 (1991)
Olomouc 105,690 (1991)
Population: 10,296,000 (1995 estimate)
Population growth rate: -0.02 per cent (1990–1995)
Type of government: Parliamentary democracy
Independence: 1 January 1993 (from Czechoslovakia)
Constitution: Ratified 16 December 1992; effective 1 January 1993
Voting Rights: Universal at age 18
Government
The 1993 constitution provides for a president as head of state, although the duties of the office are mostly ceremonial. The prime minister is head of government. The bicameral legislature is made up of an 81-member Senate and a 200-member Chamber of Deputies, which, in a joint session, elect the president. Parliament is directly elected by universal suffrage by secret ballot. The voting age is 18. The Czech Republic is divided into 7 regions that are subdivided into 75 districts.
Recent History
In 1526 the Czech lands (as well as Hungary and Slovakia) became part of the Austrian Habsburg Empire and remained so until the empire collapsed upon defeat in World War I. After the war Czech and Slovak lands were united to form a new Czecho-Slovak state (the hyphen was dropped in 1920). Tomáš Masaryk became the first president. Democracy flourished, although political power was centred in Prague, encouraging Slovak resentment. The Great Depression of 1929 led to an increase in nationalist and separatist feeling among the German community in Sudetenland, which Czechoslovakia was forced to cede to Germany in 1938. In March 1939, after Slovakia had declared independence and allied itself with Germany, the Czech lands were invaded by German forces.
At the end of World War II, the re-established government included a strong Communist contingent. In the elections held in 1946, the Communists emerged as the strongest political group, and by early 1948 they were in complete control of government. During the 1950s rapid industrialization was accompanied by extensive political purges. In the 1960s pressure for reform was resisted by the Antonin Novotný regime, but in 1967 considerable economic liberalization was conceded.
In early 1968 Alexander Dubąek, a reformist, took over leadership from Novotný. He set about creating “socialism with a human face”, and over the next eight months (known as the “Prague Spring”) radical reforms were introduced, including autonomy for Slovakia. But in August, troops from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and four other Warsaw Pact countries invaded, putting an end to Czechoslovakia’s democratic reforms. Dubąek was replaced by Gustáv Husák, who became the president of Czechoslovakia in 1975. The only reform that survived was the creation of a federal system with autonomous Czech and Slovak republics.
Resistance to Communist rule developed during the 1970s, and declared itself in the Charter 77 movement in 1977. This movement charged Husák’s government with violations of human rights, but the movement was stifled by Husák’s regime, and its leaders were imprisoned or forced to leave the country. Demonstrations and political dissent increased during the process of political change that was later known as the Velvet Revolution. In November 1989 the Civic Forum (a coalition led by Václav Havel) and the Slovak group Public Against Violence forced the end of Communist rule. Not long after the 1990 elections, nationalism re-emerged as a major issue, with Slovaks pressing for even greater autonomy. Nationalists triumphed in the 1992 elections in Slovakia and, when the newly elected Czech and Slovak national governments could not agree on the division of federal powers, Czech Prime Minister Václav Klaus and Slovak Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar decided that a peaceful split of the Czechoslovak state was the only solution.
Czechoslovakia’s president, Václav Havel, resigned, refusing to oversee the dissolution of the country, but was re-elected president of the Czech Republic after the two countries split on 1 January 1993. Since the separation, the Czech government has pursued an ambitious programme of economic reform.
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