Their transition is tortuous and unpopular among their subjects.
Their lot is, indeed, improving but glacially and imperceptibly. They
are being left behind by a largely indifferent West. Their erstwhile
central European co-inmates in the gulag of communism are now keen to
distance themselves. They are considered a drag and an embarrassment.
Their unquenched hopes for a better future are smothered by
insurmountable economic and social problems.
European enlargement is likely to stall after the first intake of 10
new members in 2004. Those left out in the cold are excluded for a long
stretch. Rather than relying on the double panacea of NATO and the EU,
they would do well to start reforming themselves by bootstrapping.
Surveys like these are timely reminders of this unpleasant reality.
Left and Right in a Divided Europe
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Also published by United Press International (UPI)
Even as West European countries seemed to have edged to the right of
the political map - all three polities of central Europe lurched to the
left. Socialists were elected to replace economically successful right
wing governments in Poland, Hungary and, recently, in the Czech
Republic.
This apparent schism is, indeed, merely an apparition.
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