LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (07/16/06)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

A coup d'état in Ukraine

Dear Editor:

The coup d'état was carried out with surgical precision. When the votes were counted, the candidate from the Party of the Regions, Mykola Azarov, received 0 votes (even he did not vote for himself), while the candidate from the Socialist Party, Oleksander Moroz, received 100 percent of the vote from the Communists, Socialists and Donbas oligarchs.

It was just enough to ensure that oligarchs, Socialists and Communists will rule in Ukraine in the foreseeable future. President Viktor Yushchenko and his hapless Our Ukraine were left holding an empty bag.

Mr. Moroz proved to be a brilliant strategist. Together with Viktor Yanukovych he was able to accomplish in a matter of hours what Mr. Yushchenko and his entourage of "myli druzi" (sycophants) could not accomplish during three and a half months of political maneuvering, to say nothing about a couple of years of his wasted presidency.

Socialist Moroz and "capitalist" Yanukovych, with an assist from Communist Petro Symonenko were able to grab the power that eluded the Yushchenko crowd. That is how successful coups d'état are always done. In a matter of hours everything is over.

Of course, Mr. Moroz will take a hit for his traitorous action of switching sides in the heat of the battle. But, frankly, one cannot blame Mr. Moroz that much. It was and remains public knowledge that the party of President Yushchenko had been negotiating with Mr. Yanukovych's Party of the Regions for months. Expecting a double-cross from Our Ukraine, which would have sidelined him and his party, Mr. Moroz simply pre-empted their move, placing himself and his party at center stage.

It was a brilliant demonstration of survival of the fittest. It was also a demonstration of the Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty (anything and everything can and does happen) in the practice of Ukrainian politics.

After self-inflicted disaster, President Yushchenko is now campaigning for a broad or "grand" coalition with the Party of the Regions. The president does not want to be in opposition to his own government. That is how ridiculous it got.

But he has a problem here. He cannot dismiss the prospective government of Mr. Yanukovych, the way he dismissed the government of Yulia Tymoshenko. Only Parliament can do so. Mr. Moroz made sure of that when the Constitution of Ukraine was amended in 2004, during the days of the Orange Revolution. And now Mr. Moroz controls the Parliament that controls the composition of the next government.

In spite of the disaster that befell them, the oligarchs of Our Ukraine can claim at least one small consolation prize: they have prevented the much-hated and feared Ms. Tymoshenko from becoming prime minister, which was, after all the object of three and a half months of delays in forming a democratic coalition, and manipulations and intrigue on their part. Ms. Tymoshenko was getting ready to clean the stables, and that was not to be, if they could prevent it. It took them much underhanded maneuvering and the writing of grandiose but false Orange Coalition platform declarations demanded by the president (all meaningless now), but they finally did it. Ms. Tymoshenko will not be prime minister.

In the process of neutralizing Ms. Tymoshenko, Our Ukraine has lost a lot, including direct access to the government money trough. This golden trough of other people's money will be now controlled by a competing clan of oligarchs from the Donbas.

Of course, Our Ukraine hopes that Mr. Yanukovych will permit them at least partial access to the golden well of corruption. Oligarchs are oligarchs, all are charter members of the former Soviet nomenklatura, birds of a feather. How generous the victorious Viktor will be with Our Ukraine remains to be seen. After all, the Socialists and the Communists stand ahead of them in line for handouts. And the price of admission to the trough has not yet been determined.

In the end nothing much has really changed in Ukraine, in spite of the doomsday predictions in the international press.

A few years back, former President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk during his visit to Minneapolis told us that the bulk of 600,000 or so bureaucrats ("chynovnyky") that rule the country are former members of the Communist Party. And that includes almost everybody in power, from the lowest "lanonyi" (overseer of a few hectares of agricultural land) to the president of the country and everyone in between. Patriotic and nationally conscious leaders, on the other hand, are mostly poets and literary intellectuals poorly suited to run the affairs of state, said the former head of state (The Ukrainian Weekly, September 14, 1997). The recent history of Ukraine has proved how right he was.

A ruling cabal of the former Communist nomenklatura, be it in the guise of oligarchs, Socialists or Communists, is steeled to the core in the Soviet mentality and corrupt way of doing business of government. Messrs. Moroz and Yanukovych demonstrated those skills on July 7.

But while they still live with the legacy of the defunct Soviet Union, one should not worry too much about them being pro-Russian as the Western press claims. This is mostly play-acting on their part for the benefit of the pro-Russian electorate in the east of Ukraine.

Some of the more thoughtful Russian observers and commentators bemoan the fact that there is no ideological pro-Russian party in Ukraine. However, ideology is not something that preoccupies Ukrainian oligarchs as much as money and offshore bank accounts. They love their money trough and good times in Monte Carlo too much to share them with Mr. Putin.

Ihor Lysyj
Austin, Texas

Thanks for articles on trafficking issue

Dear Editor:

Thank you for your in-depth reporting on the subject of international trafficking of women and children. More specifically, for the recent articles by Andrew Sorokowski and Fran Ponomarenko in the June 25, issue of The Weekly. This gave us, members of American for Human Rights in Ukraine, theimpetus to join other NGOs and write a series of letters to the pertinent individuals involved in the 2006 FIFA World Cup tournament.

We wrote 86 letters protesting prostitution in Germany: a letter to Pope Benedict, six letters to members of the German government, 26 letters to all members of the FIFA Committee in Zurich. 46 letters to members of the U.S. government and Congress, five letters to members of the Ukrainian government and 10 letters to the major sponsors.

In the letters we protested condoning prostitution and using the repressed women and children from Eastern Europe for the pleasure and gratification of men during the soccer spectacle and appealed to the organizers to mend their ways in the future.

Bozhena Olshaniwsky
Newark, N.J.

The letter-writer is president of Americans for Human Rights in Ukraine.

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