"How's your ex," a friend asked me a couple of days ago. I did notimmediately realize what he meant. Six years of marriage have cleansedmy dating history, and I tried to come up with a name that had oncemeant passion and romance. As it turned out, he was interested in my ex-president, not a former girlfriend. I must have gotten lost in the ruins of my memory right after the hyphen.

Well, he should have asked about the girls. Most of them are doingjust fine without me. To be honest with you, I am silently thanking Godhe had liberated them from what I would call a sort-of-life with aninsufferable nerd. But that's just me.

My ex-president is doing what he's always been doing. Talking. Hewas a playwright, a dissident jailed for his opinion, a hero of theVelvet Revolution. He was better at writing than talking and moretolerable talking than governing. The Constitution prevented him fromactually exerting influence; he was a symbol of the past, and worked asthe prime PR representative of Czechia. His presidency ended honorably,albeit ironically, since he was replaced by his most fierce opponent, Vaclav Klaus. The two could not be more different: a nuanced intellectual versus an economist-action hero.

Vaclav Havel, having once attracted the attention of the wholeWestern world as a moral leader for change, is now leading whicheverirrelevant cause appeals to his sense of justice. I can't disagree withhim on the rhetorical level. He is a good man and he is activisingother good men who have also lost office lately. This week, it's beenan International Conference For Democracy In Cuba. Or, as one couldsay, The Powerless Against Real Change.

Representatives of the Czech Republic, Slovakia,Bulgaria and Estonia said that new EU member states should pool thereefforts in their policies towards Cuba. [...]

"Cuba is one bigprison. The idea behind this conference should not be the violentbreakdown of the wall that is around this prison, but to ring the bellson all the doors," Havel said today.

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