| The Czech Republic is preparing to prove to Wall Street that it is not like Chechnya This only happens once in a lifetime. The inspired Mayor of Prague, Jan Castle, could not contain his delight. “Our country has not had such a brilliant opportunity to show itself for at least the last two hundred years,” this is how Mr. Castle assessed the prospects for holding the annual session of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the capital of the Czech Republic. At the end of September, ministers of finance and directors of central banks from 182 countries, international officials and international business tycoons will gather in Prague, not counting journalists and other accompanying brethren, adding the total number of official guests to 10 thousand.
The mayor's excitement is shared by the owners and employees of 24 Prague restaurants of international fast food chains such as McDonald's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken. But not because they expect revenue from the influx of wealthy clients: it is unlikely that bank directors will snack on financial conversations with hamburgers and wash down Coca-Cola from paper cups. Restaurateurs are afraid of vandalism from opponents of the globalization of the world economy, who in recent years, like flies to honey, have been flocking to “protests” on the days of any major economic forum. Prague fears a repetition of the sad experience of Seattle and Washington, where protests resulted in mass street riots. However, the Czech capital also has its own difficult memories: two years ago, during a “global street party,” the “flower children” destroyed two “branches” of the international corporation McDonald’s that they hated on the central Wenceslas Square.
The local police are preparing for the financial fiesta like they are preparing for a civil war: to receive invited and uninvited guests (“anti-globalists”, according to various estimates, from 20 to 50 thousand will arrive in Prague); 11 thousand fighters are preparing, including one and a half thousand members of military units, specially trained in anti-protest activities in big cities. FBI counterterrorism officials will be in the Czech Republic this week to train and brief local counterparts. Newspapers recommend stocking up on groceries in advance and making visits to doctors in advance, so that during the IMF and World Bank session you do not leave your home unnecessarily. Schoolchildren receive an extra week of holidays at the end of September, and most Prague theaters close. The owners of pubs and bars, especially near the Convention Center, are also preparing to put locks on the doors of their establishments: it is better not to trade for several days than to count their losses later. It seems that this really has not happened in the country over the past two centuries. The capital's newspaper Mlada Fronta Dnes responded to the call for a preliminary purchase campaign with the crude humor characteristic of the Czechs: an ancient grandfather in a cartoon buys a huge box of condoms at a pharmacy for future use.
In recent days, the Czech leadership has realized that it appears to have overdone security issues. The President, Prime Minister and other responsible gentlemen started talking not about probable problems, but about possible dividends from holding an IMF session in Prague: for example, about new investments in the Czech economy. Interior Minister Stanislav Gross reasoned with those who were worried: “We are preparing so carefully for the ‘financial summit’ only so that after its end the only criticism addressed to us is the words: you played it safe.” World Bank Vice President Mats Carlsson, who visited Prague, confirmed that endless discussions with the hosts of the event about threats and risks gave way to more constructive topics of adjusting the agenda. And the representative of the Czech Komercni Banka, Radovan Vavra, pricked his Western partners with a thin pin: “The September conference is a good chance for some to personally see that there is some difference between Chechnya and the Czech Republic, and this, it seems, is not always noticeable from the windows of Wall Street.” . Vavra was alluding to a recent incident in Hannover: on the World Exhibition board, for several weeks, the path to the Czech pavilion was indicated by an arrow with the name of the rebellious Russian territory. But after the IMF session, this simply cannot happen again: Prague will become a famous city in financial circles.
Not only the comprehensively rebuilt Congress Center, which, by the way, was visited by such distinguished guests as Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, is preparing for a meeting of world financiers. Opponents of globalization are also on the alert, determined to remind the rich: more than a billion people on Earth are starving, while governments increase military spending, and the fantastic profits of multinational corporations are not bringing humanity any closer to social equality. “Training” protests take place in Prague almost every day: last Friday, ten activists of the organization “Food Not Bombs” went on hunger strike in one of the squares; on Sunday they, still hungry, distributed food to the city beggars; On Monday, the Initiative Against Economic Globalization launched a public campaign, "55 Years is Enough," hinting at the ill-fated founding date of the IMF. The leaders of all informal groups assure that their demonstrations at the Convention Center will be entirely peaceful.
This is also the hope of President Vaclav Havel, who three days before the official opening of the session intends to receive 250 representatives of the “warring parties” in Prague Castle to give them the opportunity to come to an amicable agreement. Young anti-globalists assess the prospects of such a meeting with irony: they say that the well-fed do not understand the hungry. It’s not for nothing that the session participants will be accommodated in the best Prague hotels, and representatives of the “people’s movement” are destined to play the role of inhabitants of a tent city, which the authorities plan to set up far from the central city quarters, on the territory of the giant Strahov football stadium. Andrey STAHOV, Prague |
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