POLITICS : Specter of Poland Haunts Splintered Czechoslovakia

It is still two weeks before the parliamentary elections, and the competitors are trying hard to keep the optimism factor high as voters decide which parties and program will lead Czechoslovakia in the crucial next four years of its march through the hazards and dislocations of economic reform and political growing pains.

In Wenceslas Square, Dixieland jazz bands toot away through the late afternoons, along with guitar pickers and a blues harp soloist--all the musical fare being sponsored recently by the Civic Democratic Alliance, one of the shards of the former Civic Forum, which led the rout of Communists from power in 1989.

The alliance believes, as other groups here do, that entertainment may be as effective as long-winded speeches in winning votes in the June 6 elections.

Polls fluctuate wildly but most show that as much as 25% of the electorate is undecided. Forty political parties are competing for seats in the Parliament, and the specter that haunts most of the new generation of politicians here is the sort of paralysis that has afflicted Poland in the wake of its elections, leaving the Parliament in Warsaw divided among 29 parties and a collection of unstable coalitions.

Vaclav Klaus--the hard-knuckled finance minister, economic reform architect and the standard-bearer of Civic Democratic Forum--has warned repeatedly that a “Polish situation” could spell disaster for his reform plan.

His argument carries weight in the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia, where the preponderance of political parties favor reform, even if they argue over its details; they are therefore grouped, in the locally applicable spectrum, as “rightist,” even if they are, by American terminology, decidedly liberal.

In troublesome (and economically troubled) Slovakia, where the arms industry is foundering and factories have uncertain futures, the most powerful political parties are clearly leftist on economic issues, promising to extract a softer economic reform plan for Slovakia, with its heavy burden of big, dirty, state-owned industry.

Tapping into an uncertain current of Slovak nationalism, politicians in Slovakia have raised the threat of economic reform as a nationalist issue, effectively telling their voters that the reform plan, as devised by Klaus, is a plan that will help Czechs prosper while it throws Slovaks into unemployment.

Although polls consistently show that most Slovaks (about one-third of the country’s 15 million people) are against full separation from the federal system with the Czechs, the argument of economic inequality cuts deeply with Slovak voters. Unemployment in Slovakia has already reached 11% (against 4% in Czech lands) and can be expected to climb.

Vladimir Meciar, who heads the strongest Slovak party, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, has promised voters a “new deal” in the reform plans devised by Klaus, one that “fits Slovak conditions.” After that, he says, Slovakia will write a new constitution and hold a referendum to ask voters to define the relationship the republic wants with the Czechs.

Most of Czechoslovakia’s ablest politicians doubt that, when the dust settles, there will be a fully independent Slovakia. But the near-term conflicts, in the wake of the elections, are a different story.

Meciar’s party, if it holds the strength it displayed in the polls, could wind up with the largest single bloc in the federal Parliament, which would force deep compromises in Klaus’ plans for continuing to privatize the Czechoslovak economy.

“It seems fairly certain,” said Pavel Rychetsky, one of the leaders of the Civic Movement, “that we’re going to wind up with a generally ‘right’ Parliament from the Czech lands and a ‘left’ Parliament from Slovakia. . . .

“I think we could have a paralyzed situation, even a constitutional crisis. . . .”

Daniel Kroupa, a leader of the Civic Democratic Alliance, notes that Klaus (whose predominance in the Czech lands is not in doubt) has said he will be able to work out a compromise with Meciar. “Maybe he thinks he can hitch Meciar to his plow,” Kroupa said. “We will see.”