Turning the pages back... January 9, 2005 (01/08/06)

Turning the pages back...

January 9, 2005

In a special feature published in The Weekly one year ago, Marta Kolomayets reported that more than 12,500 international observers had converged upon Ukraine for the December 26, 2004, repeat run-off of the presidential election. According to Ms. Kolomayets, they set "world records for the size of an official foreign observer mission, whose monitors represented close to 50 countries from the global community."

"This has never happened in history before - ever," Jack McDonald, a former congressman from Michigan, who traveled to Ukraine's eastern oblasts with the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation to ensure that the election was free and fair in that contested region, told our correspondent.

Ms. Kolomayets also reported that what made this mission unique was that some 2,000 observers were the sons and daughters of Ukraine, members of the diaspora community which, through scores of years, fate had scattered throughout the world. First-, second-, third- and even fourth-generation Ukrainians from the United States, Canada, Australia, Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Romania (among other countries), ranging in age from 18 to 80, came to witness history being made in their ancestral homeland, to serve as guardians of democracy at this critical time.

"The delegation from the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America was the largest delegation registered by the Central Election Commission, numbering 2,408 monitors," noted Tamara Gallo-Olexy, the executive director of the UCCA office in New York. "And about 40 percent of those we had registered had been observers before, so they understood the process and came to Ukraine to make their contribution to democracy in this country," she added.

Viktoria Hubska, the director of the UCCA's office in Kyiv, commented: "They are some of the unsung heroes of this Orange Revolution, joining their Ukrainian brothers and sisters on the maidan [Independence Square] after the December 26 vote."

"It was, honestly, the first time in my life that I felt I could make a difference," said Orest Temnycky, a foreign exchange salesperson and consultant from Clifton, N.J.

Mark Iwasykiw, 43, an IT specialist in New York City, said: "My experience here simply confirms the fact that no matter how badly we have been beaten into the ground, we have now risen from the ashes. And I feel that this will be an amazing shift in the world."

Source: "Diaspora participation makes election monitoring mission unique," by Marta Kolomayets, The Ukrainian Weekly, January 9, 2005, Vol. LXXII, No. 2.

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