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had resigned. The weekend brought the largest demonstrations the country had ever seen -
more than 750,000 people in Prague alone. At the invitation of Civic Forum, Adamec ad-
dressed the crowd, only to be booed off the platform. On Monday, November 27, eighty per-
cent of the country's workforce joined the two-hour
general strike
, including many of the
Party's previously stalwart allies, such as the miners and engineers. The following day, the
Party agreed to an end to one-party rule and the formation of a new “coalition government”.
A temporary halt to the nightly demonstrations was called and the country waited expect-
antly for the “broad coalition” cabinet promised by prime minister Adamec. On December
3, another Communist-dominated line-up was announced by the Party and immediately de-
nounced by Civic Forum and the VPN, who called for a fresh wave of demonstrations and
another general strike for December 11. Adamec promptly resigned and was replaced by the
Slovak Marián Čalfa. On December 10, one day before the second threatened general strike,
Čalfa announced his provisional “
Government of National Understanding
”, with Com-
munists in the minority for the first time since 1948 and multiparty elections planned for
June1990.Havingsworninthenewgovernment,PresidentHusák,architectofthepost-1968
“normalization”, finally threw in the towel.
By the time the new Čalfa government was announced, the students and actors had been
on strike continuously for more than three weeks. The pace of change surprised everyone in-
volved, butthere was still oneoutstanding issue: the election ofanewpresident. Posters shot
up all round the capital urging “
HAVEL NA HRAD
” (Havel to the Castle - the seat of the
presidency).Thestudentsweredeterminedtoseehiselectionthrough,continuingtheiroccu-
pation strike until Havel was officially elected president by a unanimous vote of the Federal
Assembly, and sworn in at the Hrad on December 29.
