PRAGUE - The Czech Republic's billionaire prime minister expressed regret over his communist past on Sunday while Slovakia's liberal president hailed the sacrifices communist-era dissidents made for democracy as their nations celebrated 30 years since the Velvet Revolution toppled communism in then-Czechoslovakia.
Populist Czech premier Andrej Babis, a Communist Party member in the 1980s, and Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, a former environmental activist, both paid tribute to the peaceful uprising that ushered in democratic reforms to the former Soviet satellite in 1989.
But three decades after staging the mass protests that freed them from communism, Czechs and Slovaks have hit the streets again over the past year, concerned that pervasive corruption and politicians with communist roots are corroding democracy.
An estimated quarter-million Czechs flooded central Prague on Saturday to mark the anniversary and demand that Babis resign over allegations of graft and that he was once a communist secret agent. He has strongly denied the accusations.
"As you surely know, I was a Communist Party member. I'm not proud of that," Babis said at a Sunday ceremony in Prague attended by the prime ministers of Hungary, Poland and Slovakia and by German parliament speaker Wolfgang Schaeuble.
He said he "wasn't as brave" as Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright elected the president of Czechoslovakia in 1989, and thanked those behind the Velvet Revolution protests.
"I'm standing here today as the prime minister elected in a free, democratic election, and therefore I want to, at least now, express my gratitude and humility," said Babis, whose minority government now relies on the tacit support of Communist Party lawmakers to survive in parliament.
Speaking at Bratislava's Gate of Freedom memorial dedicated to some 400 Slovaks shot by the regime they tried to flee to neighboring Austria, President Caputova hailed communist-era "prisoners,(who were) persecuted and punished; fighting for your own freedom, you won ours."
The 46-year-old anti-corruption and environmental activist was elected as Slovakia's first female president in March on the back of mass street protests over the 2018 murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak, gunned down as he probed high-level graft.
"Democracy is an opportunity, not a guarantee of success," Caputova warned on the eve of the anniversary.
Czechs laid a carpet of flickering candles at the foot of the Velvet Revolution memorial in central Prague on Sunday.
Svatopluk Cerny, a 53-year-old IT specialist, told AFP that although 1989 brought "an absolute sea change" regarding freedoms, under democracy he sees "many squandered chances... whether in politics or the environment."
Several thousand people jingled keys and shone lights on their mobile phones in central Bratislava Sunday demanding justice for Kuciak.
Jan Budaj, a former dissident leader turned conservative opposition lawmaker, called for more action to safeguard democracy.
"Freedom has already been achieved, but now it's a matter of fighting for justice, and a functional rule of law," he said, calling for Kuciak's killers to be brought to justice.
Slovak businessman Marian Kocner has been charged with ordering the hit on Kuciak, who was investigating the property developer's murky business dealings and ties to top politicians. -AFP
