President Leonid Kuchma will soon celebrate his sixtieth birthday. Under the law he will have the right to retire and receive his hard-earned Hr 49 a month. Perhaps anticipating his difficult future as a pensioner, various people and organizations showed him special attention to him last week. During the Tavriya Games Festival it was stated that Ukraine needed no other President. A similar statement was made by a conference of TV companies' leadership, although they added that they were “concerned about media lawsuits resulting in excessive penalties.” Formally, the Chief Executive has nothing to do with these fines, but people generally know what they are talking about.
The IMF was unlucky; they must have planned a ceremonious presentation of EFF, but the President quietly left for the Crimea. Chagrined, the IMF mission also left, promising to “consider the matter.” The good cause attracted untoward intrigues. Some allege that Parliament agreed to sequester the budget as per Mr. Kuchma's edict, although everyone remembers only too well that Verkhovna Rada gave no consent, because the Deputies retired to the Crimea even before the President (to get prepared for the birthday, no doubt), so there is nobody to say anything. Most likely, the Solons simply pretended not to notice the edict and will respond to it at the right moment.
The best birthday present, however, was the news about a new political party, placing the President on a par with “such symbols of the state as the national flag and emblem” (which flag and emblem, the new or old ones?), stressing that it would build its work on the “constructive principles of accord and cooperation, excluding opposition, political engagement, and ambitions.” We have accumulated quite some experience in terms of opposition, and, while a party rejecting opposition is nothing new, rejection of “political engagement” is. The reason is quite clear. Most likely the new party was put together by a group of medium caliber businessmen who must have long become aware that business is good only when a given firm stays close to the powers that be. In other words, they figured that by setting up a party with good slogans, showing loyalty to the President (phraseology about impending catastrophe and other horrors notwithstanding), they would become popular overnight. I bet 100 to 1 that this will not work. The whole project smacks of adventurism (they even named their party in honor of Volodymyr the Great, a feudal lord who even at that troubled period had a not completely spotless reputation, and the Church resisted a long time before he was canonized).






