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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

Regime Does its Best to Have No Democratic Parties, Believes Leader of Alleged Party of Power

30 March, 1999 - 00:00

By Taras TKACHUK, The Day
NDP leader Anatoly Matviyenko decided to visit the Carpathians last weekend,
despite the capital's hosting Zlahoda's spectacular effort to join all
"healthy" forces in Ukraine.

Mr. Matviyenko told a news conference in Ivano-Frankivsk that his party
has not determined which presidential candidate it will support and is
still to decide on its attitude toward Zlahoda. The candidate will have
to wait until the May convention and Zlahoda will have the People's Democratic
Party's verdict - to either enter or ignore it - only after it makes public
its action program and statute. Mr. Matviyenko pointed out that his party's
Political Council has resolved to "join the process" - i.e., help Zlahoda
mature and follow the path of democracy, for the whole business began thanks
to administrative methods.

"We believe that volunteer organizations and political parties should
unite in order that this has been an administrative structure from start
to finish," the NDP leader said.

This tactic is based on what Mr. Matviyenko refers to as every effort
being made to "destroy all democratic forces in this state," while stimulating
splits among both the Left and the Right. He believes that what is happening
to Ukrainian parties is not accidental. "Public political forces are for
our oligarchs like light for a moth," he stressed. Everything is being
done to weaken them, for otherwise "pursuing their oligarchic interests
will be difficult and could become impossible."

A second contradiction now leading to the ruin of democratic structures,
Mr. Matviyenko believes, is that in this country the choice has to be finally
made of whether the regime creates parties or the parties create the government.
"Those ruling Ukraine," he states, "think that they make all our political
parties, but the parties by their very nature cannot accept such a view."
The NDP leader believes that these problems should be placed in the limelight
and that this would explain most of the problems within the parties rather
than looking for interpersonal factors. "They exist, but they are not the
main thing. The main thing is that our society does not seem to need strong
political parties, and thus they are not offered."

 

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