A Tale of Two Leaders

I have been struck down by the dreaded lurgi over the last few days. And what an eventful few day they have been.

We have seen the deaths of two remarkable and spectacularly contrasting world leaders. 

Vaclav Havel will be remembered as one of the prime movers behind Czechoslovakia’s Revolution. The bloodless overthrow of the Communist regime there was the tipping point in 1989 and signalled the end of the cold war and of tyranny in Eastern Europe. Havel’s passing was mourned throughout the world. He had been a brave dissident and champion of freedom even when it was not something comfortable to champion.  

Havel is up there with the greats of non violent change. His name will be spoken in the same breath as Gandhi and Martin Luther King. 

Kim Jong-il’s name will not be uttered in the same breath as those pantheons of peaceful change and progress.  He will be remembered as one who drove his country into the ground, one who sanctioned the kidnapping of a Film Director and his wide, for his weird obsessions and high living and for running the most oppressive Sate in the world – the last Stalinist Sate as we know them. 

Havel will be remembered fondly. Kim will not.