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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 Odesa projects are our bridges to Europe, although Kuchma has debased them to bribes for barons ”

21 September, 1999 - 00:00

“My Odesa impressions differ little from those I gained during my visits to Luhansk, Zhytomyr, and Vinnytsia oblasts. Almost everywhere in Ukraine, the population has been reduced to a miserable existence by the Фreforms' of the current top leadership. Economic collapse has led to six-month wage and pension arrears; people are worried about the future of their children and about the way the land problem will be handled... But I also felt, so to speak, Odesa's eternal optimism during my meetings with Black Seacoast residents, i.e., the ability to live through hardships with their characteristic sense of humor which braces them and confirms that our nation harbors a gigantic potential.

“Here there are some God-given resorts and recreational facilities, numerous sea and river harbors suitable for the development of both powerful transport junctions and free economic zones of the Reni type, the latter attracting the interest of Kyiv, Bucharest, and Chisinau alike. The Odesa region embodies a unique combination of capabilities of the agrarian and industrial economic sectors and those of the port and transport facilities, which makes it possible, with due account of the Danube River fleet, to develop a mighty transit potential, to lay an economic bridge from Ukraine to Europe. Now that shipping has been restored on the Danube line — thank God, the oligarchs failed to lay hands on the local river fleet, and at least something did not go down the drain — all this can be put into action, and the region can resume a normal life much earlier than neighboring areas.”

“In all probability, this will also depend, under certain conditions, on accents in the program put forward by the Kaniv Four. By the way, do all the partners intend to agree upon a joint election program? Or will the leader candidate enter the home stretch with his own, already announced, program?”

“I think the program should be the product of compromise. But this will obviously be difficult to achieve. For we, indeed, have different views on, say, the European vector of Ukraine's development or the way of resolving the problems of land reform. Yet, I am convinced that compromise solutions can be found. It may also happen that one of the Kaniv Four, supported by the others, will enter the elections with his own program, perhaps even without basic changes. At the same time, there is agreement that we should work out some kind of universal principles, i.e., coordinated approaches to avert economic catastrophe in Ukraine. It is difficult to announce a program due to a text limit. More space is required for one to lay down an extended and easy-to-understand program. However, even the broad program drawn up by Oleksandr Tkachenko's group will hardly form the basis, for it is designed for the long term and contains some controversial provisions. In my opinion, it should be a small well-balanced document laying down the crisis-management principles shared by all the Kaniv Four.”

“President Kuchma's team is also known to be preparing a number of draft decisions, among them a decree on setting up a transport association composed of the remains of the Black Sea Shipping Company, which still ekes out an existence, and other marine facilities. Will it be possible to denationalize sea transport, the way it was done with the Mykolayiv Alumina Plant?”

“It will hardly possible to do this now that members of Parliament have just returned from recess. But the very fact that the authorities are trying to railroad such projects through shows once again that the current top leadership rushes to reform and corporatize gigantic facilities erected over the course of decades by the efforts of the whole Soviet Union. The recent precedent in Mykolayiv and other places testifies to the brazen cynicism of the regime and, in essence, to its attempts to legitimize the plunder of the nation's property.

“We can also see on the example of the Pivdenny Oil Terminal, which should have already become an alternative source of power supply for Ukraine, how the current leadership takes care of establishing similar facilities of national importance. Let us put the record straight: it is due to the virtual freezing of the project in 1994, to please certain Ukrainian circles, that Ukraine has now missed the transcontinental project of Caspian Sea oil delivery to Europe. For, if the terminal and the Odesa-Brody-Adamova Zastava oil pipeline had been built, all these arguments, in aggregate, could have been decisive in choosing the Ukrainian route of Caspian oil supplies. Incidentally, the original project of a porto franco in Odesa was also essentially deformed, as far as I know, through the many years of red tape in Cabinet of Ministers offices. The recently issued decree on a free economic zone in the Odesa port is no match for the original project. And, taking into account the fact that the project was signed during the election campaign, this smacks of nothing but a bribe to regional barons. Hence the question arises: will the current version of the porto franco become a special control-free corridor across state borders, of which the former mayor Valentyn Symonenko once hinted in Parliament? Who will stand to gain from the free economic zone: all Odesa residents or just a bunch of local barons and Kyiv oligarchs?”

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