Delegation of women parliamentarians visits U.S. on professional exchange (02/14/99)

Delegation of women parliamentarians visits U.S. on professional exchange

by Irene Jarosewich

NEW YORK - Nine Ukrainian women parliamentarians, parliamentary staff and journalists were hosted at a reception at the Consulate General of Ukraine on January 29. The delegation arrived in the U.S. on January 20 for a 10-day training program, organized by Vermont-based Project Harmony and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to help transfer information and skills from the American political process to Ukraine through professional exchanges.

Consul General Yuriy Bohaievskiy greeted the delegation, which included Natalia Lymar of the Progressive Socialist Party, Natalia Donets of the Hromada Party and Iryna Belousova of the Green Party, journalists Oleksandra Parakhonya of Nezavisimost, Svitlana Dorosh of UNIAN and Iryna Havrylova of Den, as well as staff members Raisa Lohvynenko, Alla Huzhvenko and Raisa Sayenko.

The delegation's itinerary was divided among Washington, New York and New Jersey. Meetings were held with federal and state officials, as well as lobby groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), media consulting firms, and election and campaign organizers.

Among the NGOs visited was the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation. According to Olenka Dobczanska, communications manager for the foundation, the delegation members were interested in knowing the percentage of women mayors who participate in the foundation's Community Partnership Program in Ukraine. "They were very proud of the fact that there are 35 women deputies in the Verkhovna Rada - 8 percent - a very respectable ratio compared to the 12 percent in the current U.S. Congress." However, added Ms. Dobczanska, they admitted that no women's caucus exists, and that in this latest Rada the idea has not even been discussed.

"The Ukrainian women seem to feel that, for the present, organized representation and lobbying for 'women's issues' has to take a back seat to more 'serious problems,' and that without a women's caucus each woman deputy was free to pursue her own interests. Perhaps they feel that a women's caucus would somehow be limited to speaking out only on women's issues," she noted.

At the consulate reception, held on the delegation's final evening in the U.S., members mingled with representatives of Ukrainian American community organizations and members of the media.

As a journalist, Ms. Havrylova, at 28 the youngest member of the delegation, said she found the meetings in Washington to be useful, in particular those related to campaigns and elections, since she has already been assigned by her newspaper to cover the upcoming presidential campaign in Ukraine. However, there were few meetings involving Congress, which disappointed Ms. Havrylova. Most members of the House were in their districts and the senators were occupied with the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.

She noted that the general perception in Ukraine is that "the president's political opponents could not find any serious crimes with which to ruin him, so they set him up with sex and used the body of a young woman as a political tool against him."

National Deputy Belousova of the Green Party noted that only a country with no real problems could afford the luxury of tying up the legislative and executive branches for months on end.

Ms. Havrylova added that the Republican Party's position reminded her of the rhetoric of the Communist Party during the Soviet Union. "We have been taught," she said, "that the laws in America exist to protect the individual against the state, that the individual, above all else, has the right to be protected." It was the rhetoric of the Communist Party, she noted, that always claimed that the state needed to be protected against certain individuals. Listening to the claims of the Republican Party that America needs to be protected against President Clinton, she said, reminded her of the rhetoric of the old Soviet days.

At a meeting with the Ukrainian American community, an event jointly sponsored by the local chapters of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America and the Ukrainian American Coordinating Council, tension developed between the audience and the three parliamentarians during their presentations (the rest of the delegation members did not attend).

According to sources attending the meeting, members of the audience were harshly criicial of Ms. Lymar of the Progressive Socialist Party for her Soviet-style solutions to Ukraine's problems and were unwilling to tolerate Ms. Belousova's Russian-only presentation (she speaks no Ukrainian), stating that elected officials are obliged to know the national language. Andrew Lastowecky, one of the evening's hosts, apologized to Ms. Belousova, and urged Ms. Belousova to speak, though she declined.

Mr. Lastowecky said he regrets that Ms. Beousova did not speak, noting that of the three parliamentarians present, her party's position, more than the other two, most reflects the positions of the diaspora. He added that "it would be extremely unfortunate that this deputy would leave the evening with bad feelings and impressions about us."

As to Ms. Lymar, whose party is considered to be part of the hard-left along with the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Socialist Party of Ukraine, the audience often dismissed her answers with jeers of "Communist propaganda." Asked why the left-oriented Parliament consistently blocked economic reforms, yet held only the president and the executive branch accountable, Ms. Lymar gave no conclusive answer. When asked about a recent television broadcast in Ukraine in which her fellow party member, National Deputy Natalia Vitrenko, along with National Deputy Volodymyr Charadeyev slandered the diaspora, calling its members "bourgeois nationalists and unreconstructed Banderites," Ms. Lymar replied that the television station should not have aired the segment and urged members of the audience not to take such comments personally.

Originally, 20 women - 10 parliamentarians and 10 parliamentary staff - had been scheduled to travel with this delegation. However, according to Ms. Belousova, Verkhovna Rada Chairman Oleksander Tkachenko, claiming that Ukraine's Parliament had too much work to do for deputies to be leaving the country, cut the number of parliamentarians and staff allowed to go. The fact the Mr. Tkachenko reduced the size of the delegation was confirmed by Marta Kolomayets, former USAID public information officer in Ukraine, during whose tenure the trip had been organized.

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