LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (12/31/06)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

On commemoration of Nadia Svitlychna

Dear Editor:

I am very pleased that the commemoration of Nadia Svitlychna's work as a human rights activist has been so well documented on the pages of The Ukrainian Weekly. In this the paper continues its decades-old tradition of comprehensive and well-researched coverage of the dissident movement in Ukraine.

Adrianna Melnyk ought to be commended for her excellent report on the sixth annual Grigorenko Readings at Columbia University (December 3). Her lengthy article masterfully conveyed not only the content of the presentations but also the spirit of the event.

I would like to make a minor correction, however, with respect to a comment attributed to me during the discussion. In my response to the question of why the dissidents have been marginalized in the post-Soviet period, I noted that this issue requires thorough research, but on the basis of my recollections, I could offer as one of the possible explanations the smear campaign against the dissident candidates during the first presidential election in Ukraine. The erroneous branding of Chornovil as an "ultranationalist" I attributed not to Leonid Kravchuk himself, but to those who were involved in promoting the future president's candidacy both in Ukraine and abroad.

In view of the many questions posed at the conference, I did not have time to elaborate on this issue, but would like to take this opportunity to add a few examples to substantiate my point. During the campaign one could hear in New York at an event sponsored by an academic society a speaker from Kyiv praising Chornovil's former activities but criticizing the candidate's platform and even making sly allusions to the improvement in the former dissident's modest living conditions.

At a gathering of professionals one could hear repeated assertions that if Chornovil became president there would be an immediate war with Russia, yet when asked on what basis these claims were made in view of Chornovil's moderate political views and long history of close ties with Russian human rights activists, the speaker could offer no meaningful explanation, responding only with the lame assertion that "everybody is saying that."

One could hear a member of the "Fourth Wave" confiding privately that "she would never vote for Chornovil because the former dissident's wife (the Ukrainian poetess Atena Pashko) was Polish!"

The anti-Chornovil campaign was masterfully orchestrated and carefully conducted, with a slew of arguments aimed at every level of the Ukrainian community.

No wonder that while the presidential campaign was still in progress, a banquet was organized in a prestigious New York hotel not in honor of those who were praised during the past three decades by Western scholars and the international press for their democratic values, moderation and personal valor, but in celebration of the former secretary of ideology of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the candidate Mr. Kravchuk.

Anna Procyk
New York

Re: deputies' immunity, democratic standards

Dear Editor:

I write in response to Dr. I.I. Mayba's letter on parliamentary immunity and democratic standards published in the December 3 issue.

Parliamentary immunity as established by the Constitution of Ukraine is not counter to the standards of Europe, as Dr. Mayba writes. The majority of countries in the European Union, among them France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain, Poland and the Baltic republics, also guarantee immunity for parliamentary deputies beyond their activity as lawmakers per se.

In doing so they are following, as has Ukraine, the French model of protecting deputies from possible pressure in decision-making by limiting legal or judicial procedures that can be taken against them for any reason.

By contrast, as Dr. Mayba mentions, the United States, Great Britain and Canada restrict immunity to actions taken by parliamentary deputies as lawmakers per se, an approach that is generally called the Westminster model.

I do not speak against Dr. Mayba's assertion that parliamentary immunity as it exists in Ukraine today does not serve the interests of the Ukrainian people and should be changed. Still, it is important to note that, in the past, broad parliamentary immunity has protected the political opposition in Ukraine when few other laws did, and that its existence as part of a country's legal structure does not of itself preclude democratic development.

Uliana Pasicznyk
Toronto

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