Havel’s Party Assured of Assembly Majority : Czechoslovakia: The Communists finish a surprising second in national elections. The turnout: 96%.

President Vaclav Havel’s Civic Forum and its allied party in Slovakia were assured Sunday of winning a majority of seats in the Federal Assembly, running far ahead of the second-place Communists in Czechoslovakia’s first free elections since 1946.

A stunning 96% of the country’s 11.2 million registered voters turned out for the election, by a wide margin the broadest public endorsement of democracy so far in any of the Eastern European nations that have held free elections.

The voters assured Civic Forum and the Slovak-based Public Against Violence 169 to 171 seats in the two 150-seat houses of the Federal Assembly. The final number of seats could fluctuate as a result of the complex system of translating vote percentages into seats in the Assembly.

The Communists ran well back but still finished in a surprising second position and will probably have about 48 seats in the Assembly.

The Christian Democrats, who had been expected to draw strongly in Slovakia because of their heavily nationalist emphasis in the campaign, ran third and will be apportioned about 40 seats. The Christian Democrats outpolled the Communists in Slovakia, 18.9% to 13.8%, but the margin was smaller than many analysts had predicted.

Civic Forum, leaving most of its key ministers in place from the present government, is likely to bid for a coalition with the Christian Democrats in order to form as broad-based a government as possible, a consensus its leaders believe is needed to push through difficult economic reforms.

“We think that the future government will be a coalition,” said Jan Urban, director of Civic Forum. “We realize that there are great problems awaiting this country, and therefore we feel that the government should have a strong parliamentary majority.”

Havel has indicated that he will hang onto the concept of a “government of national understanding,” the principle on which Civic Forum took over last November.

For example, Prime Minister Marian Calfa, a former Communist who ran for Parliament as a ranking officer of the Public Against Violence in Slovakia, is likely to retain his position in the new government.

Vaclav Klaus, a Civic Forum member, is almost certain to remain in charge of the Ministry of Finance, where he has begun to lay plans for revamping the Czechoslovak economy. Although the country has only a small foreign debt in contrast with its East European neighbors and it has a strong industrial base, it is saddled with the same centrally run, state-owned industries and faces the same wrenching transition to a market economy.

Klaus is the advocate of what he calls a “short, sharp shock” to speed privatization, and last week he finished drafting a law that would provide for the mass sale of state industries to Czechoslovak citizens through a unique voucher system in which the vouchers could eventually be translated into shares. It is a complex system and will have to pass the hurdle of the new Parliament, but Klaus and his aides see it as a way of speeding privatization.

“What we have in mind is the rapid denationalization of state companies,” Klaus said. “This must be done very soon. It will be a wholesale privatization. We don’t have time to privatize two or three a year.”

Such rapid moves may test Civic Forum’s broad public support and reveal the varying shades of philosophy among its deputies in Parliament. As with Solidarity in Poland, Civic Forum grew out of opposition to the Communists, but it pulled together a wide spectrum of political inclinations, ranging from hard-line free-marketeers to West European-style socialists, unified mainly by their opposition to the Communists.

“It would have been useful for us in Czechoslovakia to have a sharp right-left split,” said Ivan Klima, a Czech writer and longtime dissident. “What we have now in Civic Forum is really a mix. We joke and call it a ‘left-right’ party. I don’t think it will last beyond two years. Civic Forum has a tremendous reputation from leading the revolt against the Communists and from the prestige of Vaclav Havel and others. But it is not made to last a long time. It is a transitional party.”

Forum leader Urban, asked to define Civic Forum, described it as a “lifeboat” and an emergency operation designed to save a country that was collapsing from years of neglect under the Communist system.

“It is nonsensical to use the usual terms of traditional democracies to describe this rescue operation, a situation so pragmatic and improvised. . . . If you are swimming in the sea and are looking for a lifeboat, you don’t consider what color it is,” Urban said.

Havel, the dissident playwright who spent the first three months of last year in jail, was at first reluctant to assume the presidency after the November street demonstrations that toppled the Communists. But he has taken to the job with evident relish and won the hearts of his countrymen with his low-key, sincere and often humorous approach to the job. He also has received a level of international adulation that may be unprecedented for a modern European leader. Civic Forum officials who work around him and who have known him for years say he is clearly enjoying the job and is assured of election by the new Parliament.

To many Civic Forum activists, the 96% turnout represents the election’s true significance--that Czechoslovaks were ready to resume their national life as the one central European nation that, before World War II, had a well-functioning democracy. As Havel said last November, when hundreds of thousands of people crowded the central square of Prague and other major cities, “We are resuming our history.”

NEXT STEP

The new Czechoslovak Parliament, which will serve for two years, will elect a president shortly, almost certainly Vaclav Havel. His Civic Forum and its allied party may seek a coalition with Christian Democrats to further broaden the base of power. But Civic Forum lacks ideological homogeneity, its only common ground being opposition to communism. And jolts to the economy--the finance minister favors a “short, sharp shock” to speed privatization--could well splinter Civic Forum and any coalition partners.