Jan Matejcek: Mark Carney misread Havel and misled the world

Carney made China our new "strategic partner. " Havel detested dictatorships and believed that governments should respect human dignity and individual freedom

By Jan Matejcek, Special to National Post
Published Feb 01, 2026
Last updated 3 hours ago
5 minute read
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Havel
PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC - A large portrait of former President of Czechoslovakia and Czech Republic Vaclav Havel with the sign: 'Havel Forever' hangs on the National Museum behind the St. Wenceslas statue on the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution on November 17, 2014 in Prague, Czech Republic. (Photo by Matej Divizna/Getty Images)

I grew up in Communist Czechoslovakia, and after the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, I served proudly on the board of Czech President Václav Havel’s Vision ’97 Foundation. Having known him personally, I can say with certainty that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plans do not at all align with Havel’s vision.

In his Davos speech, Carney invoked Havel’s essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” to draw upon Havel’s insight that the Soviet system relied upon the capitulation of ordinary people to the lies of Communist ideology. According to Carney, the rules-based international order has likewise been “partially false,” a system of lies held up by nations’ willingness to avoid “calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.”