I know this is slightly off-topic, but I thought you may be interested in this article about events in Zimbabwe in today’s “Sunday Times” (London, UK), by South African journalist RW Johnson:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article4406837.ece

I think the kind of ambition that Havel might have found troubling is the ambition to have power for power’s sake, for personal gratification, not to build or make or construct something.

It is clear from this episode that Havel was (and perhaps still is) ruthless in seizing opportunities to advance his own position. I happen to think that this attribute both necessary and desirable in a political leader, and this is why leadership and sainthood are mutually exclusive categories. Even Nelson Mandela, after all, despatched pretty ruthlessly both his first wife and his second.

Revealingly, in the same volume Havel labels his rival and successor Vaclav Klaus, “ambitious”, yet says this label is not a criticism. What an interesting statement this makes about Havel!

With nearly two dozen new(ish) states, Central and Eastern Europe are great for comparisons. Walesa, for example, got strange in power. Adam Michnik didn’t hold office, but he’s been editor of the biggest daily newspaper and a top media executive since the fall of communism. That may be more power over the long haul than one or two terms at the top. He seems to have mastered the transition. But it’s probably hard to say before hand which countries will get Mandela and which Milosevic.