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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

Top Capitalist Agrees with Top Red

15 December, 1998 - 00:00


Director of the World Bank mission for Ukraine and Belarus Paul Siegelbaum
reported that he had had an hour and a half meeting with Ukrainian Communist
leader Petro Symonenko, "and we agreed on most issues," Interfax-Ukraine
reports.

In case leftists take over power, the World Bank will not suspend its
cooperation with Ukraine, Siegelbaum said at a press conference in Kyiv.

Commenting on earlier statements by some leftists about suspending all
cooperation with international financial structures should they come to
power, Siegelbaum said, "We have already learned from the example of some
countries that the Left coming to power was not accompanied by radical
changes in state policy."

"You can be free when you are not in power. In power the government
has to pay its bills every day and make pragmatic decisions in this connection,"
the mission chairman emphasized.

In this connection, at least two suggestions arise.

First, either Siegelbaum understands Ukrainian Communists better than
we do, or they are not really Communists, but almost some kind of Social
Democrats. But then let them stop leading their voters down the garden
path and declare openly and frankly that communism and socialism are a
utopia and a bad one at that. However, our historical experience prompts
is that Communists' never speak openly and frankly.

A second possibility is that the World Bank mission chairman has taken
the same bait as many other decent Western democrats: that is, they think
it enough to agree on something with the Communists.

Meanwhile, whether they have ridden in tanks or Mercedes, Communists
have always adhered to the idea that fooling their class enemy in not a
sin, but a singular virtue. Peasants, workers, priests, doctors, etc. have
all been named as class enemies, not to mention the bourgeoisie, of which
the World Bank is doubtless a major center.

 

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