CZECH REPUBLIC: President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic received a standing ovation after making his farewell speech to parliament yesterday, but the race to replace him remained deadlocked last night.
After three inconclusive votes, the succession race has turned into a likely showdown between Mr Havel's former arch rivals and prime ministers, the conservative Mr Vaclav Klaus and Mr Milos Zeman, former leader of the Social Democrats. A new vote is expected in the coming days, with the winner requiring a simple majority of deputies from both houses of parliament.
Mr Havel, a playwright and leading figure in the "Velvet Revolution" of 1989, was one of the longest-serving leaders in post-communist Europe. "I may have succeeded in many things and may have spoiled others. But my task is not to assess my work," Mr Havel said yesterday.
He emerged in the late 1970s as one of the leaders of the Charter 77 movement, formed to force the government to live up to its human rights commitments.
He had long been a thorn in the side of Czechoslovakia's communist authorities through his pointed political satire, such as the plays The Garden Party and The Memorandum.
His dissident activities led to him being behind bars in the 1980s but a four-year prison term came to a sudden end when communism began to crumble in eastern Europe in 1989.
Following a month of massive peaceful protests, the communist authorities in Czechoslovakia resigned after 41 years in power and Mr Havel was elected president on December 29th, 1989.
However, he resigned when the division of Czechoslovakia was decided in 1992, remarking that he did not want to be leader of "a self-liquidating country".
He returned as Czech president the following year, however, and eventually served two terms, the constitutional limit.
Under his leadership, the Czech Republic has progressed from a small former East Bloc country to a NATO member and prospective member of the European Union.
Though lionised abroad, Mr Havel's popularity has dwindled among ordinary Czechs in recent years, a fact he tacitly acknowledged in his farewell speech.
"It is hardly a matter of whether tomorrow we will be praised or condemned in the newspapers or public opinion polls," he said.
"It was not to be continually loved by all that I was chosen in the past."
The years Mr Havel spent in damp communist prison cells and a lifetime of heaving smoking have taken their toll on the 66-year-old leader.
He suffered from chronic bronchitis since having a cancerous lung removed seven years ago and has been hospitalised several times.
He has bought a villa in Portugal and is expected to retire there when his term ends in next month, but he ruled out withdrawing entirely from Czech affairs.
"As a citizen of our state who never managed to keep silent when basic values of our social life were in question, I do not want and I would not be able to leave public life altogether," he said.
