Havel Elected 1st President of New Czech Republic
Vaclav Havel, who helped Czechoslovakia break free of communism but as president couldn’t stop it from splitting in two, was elected president of the new Czech Republic on Tuesday.
A playwright who led the 1989 “Velvet Revolution,” Havel was Czechoslovakia’s first post-Communist president and remains the best-known Czech politician at home and abroad.
Even many of his opponents said they could imagine no one else as the new republic’s first president.
He easily defeated his only two opponents, winning 109 votes in the 200-member Parliament as the nominee of the four-party governing coalition of Premier Vaclav Klaus. Marie Stiborova of the Communist Party received 49 votes, and Miroslav Sladek of the extreme-right Republicans had only 14.
“I thank the Parliament for the confidence it has expressed in me by electing me the first president of the Czech Republic,” Havel, 56, said after the vote.
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