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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 Lesser Evil

16 November, 1999 - 00:00

The Ukrainian presidential elections have ended as well as could be expected under the circumstances. Incumbent President Leonid Kuchma, with the help of support from Yevhen Marchuk’s electorate, has got a second term. Marchuk has replaced Volodymyr Horbulin as Executive Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council and endorsed the incumbent. Some people thought this was a sell-out. I think he did the right thing. Let me explain why.

Dante once wrote that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crisis preserve their moral neutrality. The issue of this election was not one of political platforms, but went much deeper. The Communist Party of Ukraine, led by Petro Symonenko, whatever it might say and whatever platform it might adopt, is a political force with a commitment against democracy, and had they got power, nobody in their right mind would expect a party still officially guided by the ideals of Vladimir Lenin to play by the rules. Four volumes of Lenin’s works can be summed up by the title of an old spaghetti Western, Hang‘em High. In 1925 Time Magazine quoted Stalin as saying that if something is against the constitution, we can always write another. Some years ago I spoke out against legalizing such a party, arguing that this country could use a little dose of what in postwar Germany was called denazification. After all, historical demographers still debate who killed more citizens of the USSR, Hitler or the Communists. The Reds had to be stopped at all costs. Thank God, they were.

Incidentally, the National Security and Defense Council, now with Yevhen Marchuk as its secretary, should not be confused with the US National Security Council, for it is a great deal more, controlling the Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, once the pride of the Soviet Union, and thanks to the efforts of Messrs. Lazarenko and Horbulin, all types of energy. This makes it not at all a bad place to start economic reform. Can its new secretary do it? Will the political chieftains used to feeding off this system let him? Time will tell.

No one has any illusions about the incumbent President, who has surrounded himself with some pretty odious characters that need not be named here. But the alternative would have been far worse, and we can only hope that the future might get a little better.

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