If There is Nothing to Fear, There is Nothing to Be Afraid of

No details were given, and this leads one to assume that there is such an account and the CPU leader's statement was a preventive measure. The Day's reporter consulted Hryhory Omelchenko, head of the legislative commission with a professional interest in officials with illegally opened hard currency accounts.

H. O.: Assuming that neither Mr. Symonenko nor anyone in his family has not opened foreign bank accounts, he has nothing to be afraid of. Those who eat garlic won't smell of Chanel No. 5. Our commission of inquiry has no information about any such bank accounts. Opening them takes National Bank permission. We verified the data from 1993 to 1999. The name Symonenko is not there.

As for "provocation," opening an account with a foreign bank is not that easy. There are a number of procedures and the whole thing becomes even more complex if one wants this account in a different name. In a word, Mr. Symonenko can sleep soundly.

EDITOR'S NOTE

The sad fact remains that no one, not even the President and his entourage, can sleep soundly in Ukraine these days. The election campaign is gaining momentum and its Ukrainian version is a free-for-all. Even assuming that the foreign bank account story is meant to further fray Petro Symonenko's nerves and shake his devoted electorate's confidence, the question remains, Who will gain from this? The Bankova Street people who are doing their best to build the Communist leader's image as Leonid Kuchma's number one adversary? Maybe, just so he knows where he stands exactly and fights for himself, but never against the President. Here, too, one must be careful not to overdo things, otherwise the Presidential Administration could find itself confronted by even more dangerous candidates from the Left.

If this be the case, these new candidates may well be interested in sharply weakening the CPU leader, yet doing so at the starting line would be foolish, because weakening candidate Symonenko would mean weakening the entire Red battering ram intended to mobilize the masses against the regime, and by no means demoralize them with disheartening evidence indication they are all like that upstairs.

Speaker Tkachenko has many opportunities in this game (as evidenced by the revived Volkov case). Moreover, he is interested in Petro Symonenko's stepping down more than anyone else, with the party masses and electorate switching over to the Red Speaker. Yet the situation is dangerous. Started prematurely, an intrigue can allow the interested parties time to study the situation, and then allies turn into enemies, in which case the Speaker would lose Communist support not only during the campaign, but also in his present capacity.

Nor are the Right candidates likely to be interested in discrediting Petro Symonenko, because no realignment of forces and ratings in the Left camp would change anything for them any more or less significantly.

Thus either Petro Symonenko has jumped the gun or there is another scheme underway on Bankova Street, the logic of which is totally incomprehensible simply because it has no logic.

(See page Closeup for The Day's portait of Petro Symonenko)