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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

Fair Election?

13 July, 1999 - 00:00

I first met Petro Ruban in Washington over a decade ago when
he arrived bearing the laurels of a fearless and long-suffering fighter
for his nations freedom and I was Staff Director of the US Commission on
the Ukraine Famine, a hybrid body set up to study the Manmade Famine of
1932-1933. Petro did not quite understand that the Ukrainian emigration
has its own structures and professional politicians; he soon ran afoul
of both, but went into business and prospered. Three cheers for him.

What is most telling about his interview here is not the wealth of information
he gives about his decades as a prisoner of conscience but about what has
happened since then. Not only did nobody offer to extend Ukrainian citizenship
to a Ukrainian who suffered so much and so intrepidly for Ukrainian independence
until the final years before its attainment, he has been effectively prevented
from doing business here because he wanted to get involved in the election
campaign and backed the wrong candidate (from the standpoint of the current
regime), Yevhen Marchuk.

The issue here is not a specific candidate's merits or shortcomings
but that more and more blatantly the people are being denied the right
to make a free and fair choice of who will govern them. In recent issues
we have reported how dossiers are being opened on state employees who signed
petitions to put candidates other than the incumbent on the ballot. Moreover,
it is no secret that structures, included this newspaper, associated with
the candidate the current chief executive most hopes to undermine are under
extreme financial pressure. An old acquaintance now working in the Presidential
Administration recently told me in private conversation, "They'll close
The Day before the election."

"How?" I asked.

"The Kievskie Vedomosti scenario," he replied matter-of-factly.
Kievskie Vedomosti has recently been bought by pro-Kuchma oligarch
Hryhory Surkis, and now, with it firmly in the incumbent's camp, its troubles
are over. A similar fate is evidently being planned for us.

They have already been trying for some time. In a world where it is
practically impossible not to break the law and practically everybody can
be made guilty of something, it is almost always possible to find something
to pin on anyone. This means law, in the sense of a set of rules for all,
breaks down and is replaced by arbitrary rule. Fortunately, this publication
has taken extraordinary care from the very beginning to be purer than Caesar's
wife. Still, it is a fair bet that the boys in the Presidential Administration
are staying up late at night poring over everything they can get their
hands on.

Ukraine's current rulers have let this country slip down to 102nd place
in the UN human development index. The authorities claim it is really much
higher, between 85th and ninetieth. Those who dug this country into its
current hole are not likely to change what impels it to sink ever deeper
(see Volodymyr Zolotariov's excellent material on the current President).
They see their only chance in pulling out all the stops against whomever
threatens them.

 

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