EDITORIAL: The Zvarych affair (05/22/05)

EDITORIAL

The Zvarych affair

The controversy over the academic résumé of the justice minister of Ukraine, Roman Zvarych, has been covered extensively in this newspaper and there has been some question (and, from some quarters, pressure) about why The Weekly is writing about this. Some of the criticism came from persons who basically said, "Why are you attacking one of our own?"; while others advised The Weekly to steer clear because this is all a planned attack by certain forces out to get Mr. Zvarych.

The Weekly opted for openness and truth. Let the readers know the facts, we reasoned, and they can make their own judgments.

And then there was the fact that Mr. Zvarych blamed the diaspora for his problems, citing "ideological wars and scores between Banderites, Melnykites and Dviykari." He added that "This fact is still being taken advantage of in diaspora publications." Let us say it here for the record: We have no clue what the minister is talking about; we see no evidence of any war between political factions.

We must confess that another factor in our decision to cover the story was the fact that back in 1998, when Mr. Zvarych became the first U.S.-born member of the Verkhovna Rada, this newspaper interviewed the new national deputy and reported that Mr. Zvarych had a doctorate in philosophy and had taught at Columbia University. Mr. Zvarych now says that our reporter misunderstood his Ukrainian. So, seven years later, we had to find out for ourselves and set the record straight.

After Ukrayinska Pravda first reported the story, what followed was days of Mr. Zvarych dodging phone calls. Then came a game of obfuscation in which he seemingly admitted that he had embellished his academic record, but then explained with much convoluted detail that he had something equivalent to a master's; that he had been preparing to do a doctorate; that he taught at Columbia but not in a paid position; and that at NYU, where he was a part-time lecturer, he may not have had the academic rank of professor but was referred to as such by his students and colleagues.

To make matters worse, it seemed that Mr. Zvarych told different press outlets different versions of his story. Plus, he used the language issue - citing misunderstandings of Ukrainian and English terminology - to explain how his comments or his record were misconstrued by the press. Nonetheless, he did not provide an English-language version of the statement he released to the press in Ukraine on May 10.

President Viktor Yushchenko at first refused to comment on the Zvarych case. It seemed as if his administration had taken a page out of the Kuchma playbook and was simply ignoring the issue, hoping it would go away. Then, on May 13, Mr. Yushchenko came out and told journalists to stop "the intrigues" surrounding Mr. Zvarych. Furthermore, he called his justice minister "an honest person" and cited his expertise (while stating that "for me the position of minister is a political position").

Soon afterwards Ukrayinska Pravda commented on the genesis of its investigation: "...the 'operation' against Zvarych, as they [President Yushchenko and National Security and Defense Council Secretary Petro Poroshenko] call it, was initiated by Ukrayinska Pravda. And not by mythical ill wishers of Zvarych's - the diaspora, the millionaires, or Yushchenko's enemies. And the letter that spurred the investigation comes not from oligarchs who wanted to get rid of Yushchenko in 2001, according to Mr. Poroshenko, or who suffered from Zvarych's fight against corruption in the tax agency. It comes from a person who was absolutely shocked by what he had learned. Proud about Ukraine, he suggested to the magazine of a prestigious university that it interview its famous graduate, and as a result he received a reply that the university did not have such a graduate on record." (Translation courtesy of The Ukraine List, compiled by Dominique Arel, Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Ottawa.)

All that said, we must underscore that Mr. Zvarych's defenders miss the point. It's not that he is not qualified to be justice minister or that his education is deficient in any way. It is that he lied. He lied repeatedly over the course of many years about his academic record: his degrees, his writings and his teaching assignments. The issue is one of character.

To put it bluntly: Is it OK to have a justice minister who lies? Is it OK to obfuscate when you are part of an administration that has stated from the outset that it would be open, that it would always look the Ukrainian people in the eye and tell them the truth? Yes, we are holding the Yushchenko administration to a higher standard than the Kuchma administration because Mr. Yushchenko came into office on promises that it would not be business as usual in Ukraine.

In the end, the saddest part of this affair is that Mr. Zvarych's actions harmed him personally, the diaspora whence he came, the Yushchenko administration that appointed him to his high position and Ukraine as a whole. No one needed his lies.

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