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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

The Lazarenko Affair is Over for Kuchma

2 March, 1999 - 00:00

By Volodymyr ZOLOTARIOV, The Day

As reports The Day's Mykhailo Bidenko, Prosecutor General Mykhailo
Potebenko expressed an assurance during his visit to Kharkiv that Pavlo
Lazarenko would be brought to Ukraine in the next few days.

However, the main guardian of law and order seems to have overdone it
a little. Indeed, after James Mayoke, Mr. Lazarenko's American lawyer,
said his client had really asked for political asylum, we may say the current
stage of the Lazarenko affair has come to an end. Even if the Americans
do not grant Mr. Lazarenko asylum after a lengthy procedure, he may appeal
this decision in a court of law, which will cover four judicial instances.
As a result, he may quietly stay in the US for about a year, at a conservative
estimate, waiting for the outcome of his case. If the US chooses eventually
to deport Mr. Lazarenko, he may go wherever he wants and is unlikely to
wish to throw himself into the hands of the Ukrainian judiciary. So we
can assert, in all probability, that we will not see Mr. Lazarenko until
the presidential elections.

The preliminary results of the Lazarenko story are unenviable. Firstly,
society has plunged almost into hysteria. Public transport commuters discuss
in earnest how to distribute Mr. Lazarenko's fortune and who will benefit
most. These calculations are in fact rather simple. If Mr. Lazarenko is
arrested, if the abuses he is accused of are proved and the money he is
said to have illegally misappropriated (about $3 million) is confiscated
and distributed among, say, pensioners (13 million), then each of the latter
will get about 20 cents (about 1 hryvnia). Let us add to this the extremely
low probability of each if, and it becomes clear that the price of massive
lumpenization of sentiments whipped up by the official media leaves something
to be desired, to put it mildly. It would also be good to remind our power-holders
that it makes no difference for a lumpen whether he deals with Mr. Lazarenko
or Mr. Kuchma, and the carefully-orchestrated "peoples' wrath" might not
necessarily fall on the opposition.

Secondly, the simple questions still remain unanswered: Why are the
corrupt prosecuted only after they leave office? Why was this same Lazarenko
dismissed from the Premier's post "for reasons of health? And why did none
of the officials who had promoted his career (almost all of them still
in power) asked to resign? Any attempts to find answers to these questions
are sure to lead us to those in power, which, of course, will not increase
their authority or that of the state.

Thirdly, those in power seem to have misunderstood the realities of
today's world and, in particular, who is boss in the USA. No matter how
hard it might try, the US government is unlikely to be able to pressurize
the courts, the decisive link in the mechanism of deporting Mr. Lazarenko
to Ukraine. Different interpretations by American authorities, so much
publicized by our officials, are only important for propaganda inside Ukraine,
no more.

Fourthly, the danger Mr. Lazarenko presented to Mr. Kuchma has not vanished
at all. It is clear Mr. Lazarenko had no chance to become president (this
may only have been an illusion he and the administration held), so his
removal from the political arena is by no means removal of a rival. Mr.
Lazarenko's main danger is his threat to tell the unvarnished truth about
the (mis)deeds of Ukraine's top leaders. It is now much easier to fulfill
this threat than before, for the story will sound directly in the ears
of a "strategic partner" on whose favorable attitude depends, to a large
extent, Mr. Kuchma's success in the coming elections. No wonder, the Prosecutor
General said in Kharkiv Mr. Lazarenko "should be isolated." He justified
his stand by the fact that the Lazarenko case includes not only the episodes
reported to Verkhovna Rada but also some "other materials which do not
allow Lazarenko being at large," reports Interfax-Ukraine. Indeed, in addition
to information on the President, Mr. Lazarenko is certain to possess other
closely-guarded sensitive data, and only God knows how will handle them.
This is another thorn in the side of the authorities who have sacrificed
national interests for the sake of their own survival.

And the last, the most terrible in my opinion, conclusion. It was shown
in the Lazarenko affair that no one - either among those in power or even
in opposition - dared to reproach Mr. Lazarenko that he had gone without
waiting for the trial at which he could have proved, in theory, his innocence.
At any rate, this so convincing an argument was in fact not used during
a propaganda campaign in the presidentially controlled media. Thus, those
in power have admitted openly that law does not work in this country. This
is a horrible diagnosis comparable to a court sentence.

 

Those in power are unlikely to get expected dividends
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