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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 President Read His Message With Interest"

24 November, 1998 - 00:00

The title phrase, which could become the aphorism of the year, was coined
in Parliament's lobby almost as soon as the President had finished reading
his message. Practically everybody was left under the impression that those
in his entourage composing the document had no time to coordinate various
positions and interests.

In the first part the President reduced to powder the Cabinet's and
National Bank's performance. Watching Mr. Yushchenko in the audience, one
felt that the man was ready to shoot himself right then and there. Mr.
Pustovoitenko's expression was best described using Caesar's Et tu, Brute?
"Today I pitied Pustovoitenko as a man. The President has utterly destroyed
him," The Day's reporter was told by Hromada's Yuri Karmazin. Some
other NDP lawmakers think that "the Presidential Administration is subconsciously
but objectively shaping up Yushchenko as a presidential candidate."

In the second half the President arrived at the conclusion that, but
for the expert efforts on the part of the government and NBU, the situation
would have been worse.

The discrepancies were so obvious that many People's Deputies decided
the message would end with letting the hryvnia drop, activating the money-printing
machines, auctioning off Ukrtelekom (to Russian bidders?) under the excuse
of paying social debts, and the Ukraine Bank (proposed to be reorganized
as a farm mortgage one) would go under either Mr. Tkachenko or Russian
capital (which would be even more interesting). Oleksandr Riabchenko (Green)
told The Day unequivocally, "It was a bad message. They wrote it
for him, about what they were actually doing. He read it and it turned
out about what they want to do. I am horrified to think of what would happen
to Ukraine if all this were carried out!" The most convincing aspect of
the message was an assessment of the current situation. Roman Zvarych (Rukh)
summed it up: "It would be a good presidential candidate's speech, except
that it was made by the current President. The question is where has he
been all this time and doing what."

A similar question was voiced by the Communist Pavlo Kuznetsov, although
not in so many words: "It was as though the President had been absent from
Ukraine for about eight years." Oleksandr Lavrynovych, laughing, told
The Day, "It's been a long time since I heard anything so funny."

In contrast, Deputy Oleksandr Volkov thought well of the message. He
liked the part about reducing the bureaucratic machine by 30%, at the local
as well as Presidential Administration level. "This will save a lot of
money and we must use it to pay our pensioners. Thank God, we are saved!..."

This comedy of the absurd in Parliament ended in the adoption, in the
second reading, of the poverty line bill. As a sign of victory, the Progressive
Socialist faction took off their hunger strike headbands, leaving it to
the President to struggle to veto the law.

 

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