• Українська
  • Русский
  • English
Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Alas, Poor Gore...

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

As an American sitting in the capital of what passes for the Ukrainian state I cannot help feeling sorry for all those American experts trying to figure out what is wrong and what, if anything, can be done about it. The latest flurry of presidential paper-shuffling has called out the enthusiasm of Vice President Al Gore: well, at least and at long last somebody is doing something... Of course, nobody seems to know quite what or to what end.

The year of drift that has marked Valery Pustovoitenko's government is a case in point. It was inaugurated less than auspiciously with a seldom recalled interview of outgoing Justice Minister Serhiy Holovaty (evidently fired for excessive competence) in Zerkalo nedeli, where the official formerly in charge of the ill-starred Clean Hands anti-corruption campaign stated that the center of corruption in the Ukrainian government was the Ministry of the Cabinet of Ministers, up to then headed by, you guessed it, Valery Pustovoitenko.

Nor is Parliament any better. Somehow I cannot quite recall how many tens of millions of dollars of state guaranteed loans the Land and People agricultural cooperative when headed by Ukraine's new Speaker of Parliament cost Ukrainian budget coffers. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 million. No wonder Mr. Tkachenko calls his past business dealings his private affair and will answer no questions. By the end of this Parliament, one can safely assume that he will have a good deal more not to comment on.

And then there is charity. One young man working for an American private foundation told me: "If 30% of what we bring in actually makes it to the people it's intended for, we feel we're doing great. The rest of it gets stolen and sold, and there's nothing we can do about it. Everybody puts up with it because there's no other way to get anything in." No state secret here: "humanitarian aid" is sold openly in every street bazaar.

Which brings me back to my Vice President. It must be hard trying to help a country whose establishment seems to be taking its national slogan from the title of an old Woody Allen film: Take the Money and Run.

 

Rubric: