The general challenges of these days and the upward movement
The National Roundtable invites to take part in a social dialogue
On April 5, the Ukrainian Home hosted the National Roundtable “The Mission of Intelligentsia and Free People of Ukraine,” which was suggested by the primates of the three churches. At the invitation of the organizers of the roundtable, “December 1” Initiative Group, 80 leading philosophers, public figures, workers of culture, and journalists attended the event.
“We come out to people with an offer to hold a broad public discussion of the evident spiritual crisis in society,” the head of the “December 1” Initiative Group Ivan Dziuba said in his opening address. “Among the main problems we can see the problem of assertion of the national identity and real conditions of the present day. It means that we are facing non-creation of the nationwide information culture space, without which we risk losing our state independence, peacefully and for good. More than ever we need now a health-improving upward movement, which needs to be powerful. Today we doubt that the future elections will be indeed democratic, transparent, and honest. We don’t believe they will be held with an aim to hear the voice of the voters, but in order to preserve the power at any rate.”
“It is important to keep in mind that a free person is not a slave of the circumstance, and a free country is a country of free and decent citizens,” the member of the “December 1” Initiative Group Yevhen Sverstiuk said in his speech at the plenary session of the roundtable. “In our reality all Ukrainian parties are post-Communist. They all were raised by the regime, which lulled their deep materialism aspirations with ideological words. Some of them liked criminal-inclined materialism, others – materialism with authoritarian statehood, yet the others – with national sentiments. The raft has always been based on God’s law and truth. God gave moral foundations to people and we are appealing to that.”
The first part of the roundtable was a plenary session, with the participants’ debate taking place. Ivan Dziuba, Myroslav Popovych, Yevhen Sverstiuk, Myroslav Marynovych, and Cardinal Liubomyr Huzar delivered their speeches. During the second part of the meeting the participants were working in four sections and prepared a summary document of the National Roundtable “An Invitation to Social Dialogue.” According to the organizers of the event this roundtable should be held on a regular basis, two or three times a year. And in the breaks already shaped expert groups will process the materials they received and prepare new documents and proposals.
The National Roundtable has a non-party character on principle. The organizers of the event did not deliberately invite to their dialogue neither representatives of the power, nor leaders of political parties, nor Verkhovna Rada MPs.
