Debates were to be held in the Parliament, but it proved impossible: The Federal Assembly and the velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989

During 1989, the year of the collapse of the Communist regime, a claim was often repeated in Czechoslovakia that substantive political debate about the direction of the country ought to be held particularly in the parliament. Yet the key political debates shun away from the parliament for the entire year. The legislature did not become the stage for politics, a forum for substantive debates or the arena for competing forces. The article maps the attempts to empower the parliament and analyses the reasons for their failure. Particular focus is given to the few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall that culminated in Czechoslovakia with the election of Václav Havel and Alexander Dubček to the supreme constitutional posts of the President and Chairman of the Federal Assembly.