Iron fist in the velvet divorce

WHILE thousands of Slovaks celebrated the birth of their new country in the first minutes of this year, Anton Hajduk was among many who opted for a quiet evening at home.

For him, there was no cause for merriment. Apart from the fact that he did not welcome the break-up of Czechoslovakia, 1993 may well put him in the growing ranks of Slovakia's unemployed.

It is not that Mr Hajduk works for one of the country's numerous no-hope factories. The 59-year-old astronomer is rector of the recently reopened university in the town of Trnava, and has won considerable esteem from students, colleagues and visiting academics. He has an implacable foe, however, in the Slovak government headed by Vladimir Meciar, the populist former boxer and Communist.

According to Mr Hajduk, the government's enmity stems from the fact that it regards him and his staff as potential opponents. It made repeated attempts to oust him last year, and the rector fears a fresh onslaught.

'It is simply a matter of time before they try to sack me again,' said Mr Hajduk, a member of Slovakia's Academy of Sciences, on the eve of the country's independence at midnight on Thursday. 'I was never able to give a guarantee of obedience, and from that time on, they have wanted me out.'

The row over Mr Hajduk and the university erupted almost as soon as Mr Meciar won last June's watershed elections that signalled the demise of the Czechoslovak state.

Mr Hajduk had been officially nominated as rector by the former federal president, Vaclav Havel, but he was soon made to feel his position was no longer secure.

Members of Mr Meciar's government labelled Trnava an 'oppositional university' and railed against 'opportunists' who were using the establishment to undermine their authority.

Dusan Slobodnik, the Education Minister, announced that Mr Hajduk was to be replaced by a more malleable candidate - a former university Communist Party leader - and even went as far as to change the locks on some of the university doors. When Mr Hajduk, backed by his colleagues and students, refused to budge, the minister froze the university's bank accounts, refusing to pay its bills or salaries.

The government rejects allegations of political motivation as 'absolutely false', insisting instead that its objection to Mr Hajduk is over his qualifications for the job. As an astronomer, he has been trained in the sciences rather than the arts and, as such, it is argued, is unfit to head a university set up to specialise in the humanities.

To the rector and his colleagues, most of whom have been working unpaid since September, such arguments are a smokescreen to disguise an attack on academic freedom and the maintenance of a jobs-for-the-boys system for former Communist Party officials.

'It is a primitive way of thinking, that anyone who is against the government is an enemy of the state,' said Mr Hajduk, a long-term opponent of the old Communist regime. 'For us, the fight over the university is a fight to keep democracy in our state.'

Since coming to power in June, Mr Meciar has sought to silence critical voices in the media by warning journalists to apply 'ethical self-censorship' in their reporting, which should be aimed at producing 'truthful' images of Slovakia.

He has also placed many of his own people in key positions throughout society, including at the head of the state-controlled television news. The authoritarian tendency could worsen if, as seems likely, Slovakia's economic woes are intensified as a result of the split with the more prosperous Czech republic.

Mr Hajduk does not count himself among the total pessimists. To his relief, the government's attempt to force through a law cancelling Trnava's university status last year failed to secure the necessary parliamentary majority - a result, he believes, of pressure brought to bear from all over the world.

'The government may well try to bring the matter to another vote and it will certainly continue to agitate for my removal, but I do not think there is a danger of us sliding back into dictatorship,' said Mr Hajduk.

'Fortunately we are not a country in total isolation. Even if there are some people in the government with dictatorial tendencies, they will not succeed.'

(Photograph omitted)