Speech at the nationwide meeting of members of the Confederation of Political Prisoners held in Prague on 22nd May 2007

Friends – I think I can use this word among you – friends, I know well how you wish the communism ceased to be a threat for our freedom.

I go to see you often. I speak to you. I listen to you. We agree each other. We need not explain anything each other. But what we must to talk about again and again is the way how to explain others, in particular the young, what the threat of communism consists in.

I do not think that the threat consists exclusively and in particular in the Communist Party. The problem does not consist in a powerful institution like twenty years ago. It consists in the way of thinking.

The communism as an all-powerful institution does not exist any longer. It survives in the form of weak residuum, which the well-operating democracy should manage.

But our democracy has not been able to manage communism for the present. Red flags were flying over our country in 1980´s, but minds of most of people were fixed to freedom.

Today, the communists are only the third biggest parliamentary party and they do not rule. But nearly half of people are willing to let this unreformed Communist Party (KSCM) to seize power.

It is not a fault of communists; it is a fault of democrats; democrats who prepare laws that communist need not be ashamed of, and democrats also push ahead those laws together with communists. Shameful example is the Labour Code, which is based on communist dirigisme.

If democrats cooperate with communists blatantly, if they remove differences between democratic and communist policy, then there is no surprise that citizens cannot see any differences either.

I understand voices who call for the ban of the Communist Party. But I cannot regard it as an effective way of the fight. Our purpose is not to expel residuum of communism from the Parliament; far more important thong is to expel communist feelings of resentment from heads of our children.

And it is quite within our power. We need not use bans – by the way we can hardly imagine them nowadays. It is necessary to remember what the great British statesman Winston Churchill said: A communist is just like a crocodile: when he opens his mow, you cannot recognize if he tries to smile or if he wants to devour you.