THE CZECH REPUBLIC: A huge red neon heart on the tower of Prague Castle has glowed in the night sky over the Czech capital for months. The sign, a larger-than-life version of the heart President Vaclav Havel adds to his signature, will be extinguished tomorrow when the ailing Czech leader departs the public stage.
Mr Havel's retirement brings to an end a remarkable public life and a dwindling love affair with the Czech people. But as the first chapter of post-communist history in the Czech Republic draws to a close, Mr Havel leaves the country without a president as Czech politicians squabble over a successor.
Mr Havel is one of the longest-serving leaders in post-communist Europe, but his presidency was his third career. His first was as a prominent playwright whose absurdist plays satirised the politics and language of Czechoslovakia's communist authorities.
The clampdown on artistic expression in 1968 led to his second career, as one of the leaders of the Charter 77 movement, formed to force the government to live up to its human rights commitments.
His dissident activities came at a price, and he served multiple prison sentences. His last term behind bars came to a sudden end in 1989 as communism began to crumble across the East Bloc. Within days he was addressing millions of Czechs at rallies in central Prague and by the end of the year the Velvet Revolution had toppled the communist authorities after 41 years.
Mr Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia but he resigned in 1992 as the country headed towards its Velvet Divorce, only to return the following year as Czech President for two five-year terms, the constitutional limit.
He used his role as President to address what he saw as the crucial themes of our times, globalisation and the civil society.
"Mr Havel believed that politics without a civil society is like a body without circulation," said Mr Jiri Pehe, a former adviser to the President. As the Czech Republic makes its last steps towards EU membership, he says that Mr Havel's central theme has taken on a new relevance, converging with the current discussion of the democratic deficit in EU institutions.
Mr Pehe admits that the President's preoccupation with big themes impressed foreign leaders but made him a source of exasperation and embarrassment at home.
"Most people do not understand why he is talking about such things when there is high unemployment," said Mr Pehe.
Others are less polite. Mr Alexander Zaitchik, a commentator with a Prague newspaper, describes Mr Havel's presidency as a "tragedy": a steady and pragmatic shift to realpolitik.
"He is now an establishment-friendly ethical circus act ... who had credibility with the NATO brass and Amnesty International," says Mr Zaitchik.
"Those who naively wished him to be a powerful voice for underdog politics, however, will not judge him so kindly. His reputation as a progressive force in the world is something of a sad joke."
As a dissident and pacifist, Mr Havel was a critic of NATO, but his decision, as President, to embrace the alliance will be remembered as a major turning point for the Czech Republic and his presidency.
Despite criticisms of buckling ideals, Mr Havel's playwright's skill of writing between the lines to satirise the communist authorities has proved useful as President, helping him to speak out on themes close to his heart while walking a diplomatic tight-rope.
His political difficulties have been overshadowed by his health problems in recent years, the result of years spent in damp communist prison cells and a lifetime of heavy smoking.
The 66-year-old leader had a cancerous lung removed seven years ago and has been hospitalised several times.
On Thursday, an ashen-faced Mr Havel entered the Hall of Mirrors in Prague Castle to greet the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, his last foreign visitor.
Mr Ahern praised the Czech President as a "world figure who has made an enormous contribution to events in Europe in the last 13 years".
Despite Mr Havel's love-hate relationship with the Czech people, the difficulty in finding a successor is an indicator of his irreplaceability in Czech society.
After two inconclusive parliamentary votes, the coalition government hopes to find a compromise presidential candidate before the end of the month. If a third vote fails, a direct vote is likely.
Meanwhile, Mr Havel is determined to remain a voice on Czech and European affairs, as the dissident who became a non-political politician with little interest in personal popularity.
As he told parliament in his final address: "It was not to be continually loved by all that I was chosen in the past."
