The events at Mlýnec have become an overarching metaphor for the current situation in the Czech Republic, symptomatic of a number of uncertainties and problems that are intensely felt by Czechs today. The technoparty has become an instrument that Czechs are using to try to map out the limits of democracy, freedom, tolerance, political manipulation, the rights of minorities, and law and order.

Legal experts from the Ministry of Interior have now come up with a draft law entitled "On the conditions of organizing some gatherings," the purpose of which is, apparently, to outlaw events like CzechTek. What seems to be bothering the experts at the Interior Ministry is the spontaneity and the non-hierarchical structure of these events. In typical Central European fashion, they are trying to overwhelm such spontaneous events with bureaucratic procedure. The Czech authorities are thus signaling that they are not prepared to tolerate a certain subsection of today's youth culture. The bill's discriminatory nature is self-evident. It would appear that Czech democracy must still master the principle of compromise, of inclusiveness. It was communist practice to suppress certain sections of society as "antisocial." The progress of this bill through Parliament will tell us a lot about contemporary Czech society.

Looking back, if we consider what happened at CzechTek and during the subsequent public debate, there is little to be impressed with.

The organizers of CzechTek at Mlýnec rented a plot of land, and there was no legal reason for the police -- who acted unprofessionally, inefficiently and brutally -- to act.

The event was then grossly misused for political ends. It is true that most of the mainstream media in the Czech Republic have now decided to support the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) in the pre-election period: Journalists in some Czech periodicals have been told never to publish anything critical about anyone from ODS. A newspaper is, of course, fully entitled to support whichever party it wishes, as long as it publicly declares its support. But to claim impartiality while looking for dirt on only one party is manipulation. Some mainstream Czech media are now systematically diging for dirt on Prime Minister Jiří Paroubek -- and the CzechTek controversy has been a Godsend.

Having said that, Paroubek's reaction to the events at Mlýnec has been disgraceful. What is particularly worrying is that Paroubek has been using expressions that are strongly reminiscent of the Gustáv Husák neo-Stalinist "normalization" era of the 1970s and 1980s when the regime strongly persecuted the alternative music culture.

Of course, watching the hypocrisy of ODS politicians, including President Václav Klaus, is depressing as well. It was, in a way, funny to see Czech right-wingers defending the supporters of dance music against the police since we know full well that if the ODS were in power they would use the police to suppress CzechTek even more brutally. But one cannot come down on the side of the CzechTek ravers either, who declared, like true ideological zealots, that their "values" are much more important than a few nights of other people's sleep.

Originally published in Czech Business Weekly HERE