Ladislav Adamec, the last prime minister of the socialist Czechoslovakia and a moderate, pro-perestroika politician from a mining family, died on Saturday at age of 80.
He was tolerated, to say the least, by the Civic Forum when the Velvet Revolution got started. When the velvet revolutionaries were not yet too ambitious, they were dreaming about being able to make Adamec the most powerful person in Czechoslovakia. ;-)
Democracy and the competition it brings is a good mechanism to find better politicians in the long term but it can't eliminate the fluctuations. When I look back, Adamec would get a much higher score than most leftist activists - and some leftist politicians - whom we can see today.
