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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

WEEKLY ROUNDUP

9 February, 1999 - 00:00

The Ministry of Transport is protesting. The sailors' trade
union central council is indignant. Parliamentarians, suspecting the executive
power of trying to grab Ukrtelekom, demands the removal of any mention
about changed forms of property from the bill on government support of
telecommunications employees now under consideration. And if they fail
to do this, they will bury the bill. A picket of believers in front of
the Verkhovna Rada building demand, in their turn, cancellation of identification
numbers. In other words, the past week a certain light of protest shined
on other events.

As soon as Monday the Ministry of Transport press service voiced an
official protest in reply to "gross violations" of the law by the judiciary.
The pretext is most typical for a time of troubles. The Illichivsk municipal
court dismissed a protest of from the Odesa oblast prosecutor's office
that the state in the person of the State Property Fund and the Ministry
of Transport was again being robbed in a big way, for about 27 million
hryvnias. And, what is especially undesirable for the regime, the act of
robbery (the auctioning of two passenger liners at throw-away prices) was
this time widely publicized. This is why the authorities put off indefinitely
the departure of the Taras Shevchenko and Odesa Sun from the port of Illichivsk,
and brought a suit under Articles 165 and 80 of the Ukrainian Criminal
Code against the culprits. The case is to be heard at the High Court of
Arbitration, Odesa Oblast Court, and Odesa's Prymorsky District Court.

On the other hand, two special commissions, a government one chaired
by Serhiy Tyhypko and one from the oblast justice department under O. Semenov,
are in an unenviable position. They will have to carefully investigate
the legal aspects of the sales scandal or, in other words, the reason why
the well-oiled privatization mechanism has gone awry. The Semenov commission,
however, balked: how can it stand up for state interests if the available
data say the liners do not belong to Ukraine (they were listed as foreign
property well before the auction gavel struck), while there are probably
still other documents secreted away? What it seems to come to is a documented
case of split property.

It is hard to help a person who shows the symptoms of schizophrenia,
much less a state, whose structures show a split personality in their decisions
and actions. On the other hand, however, somebody surely stands to gain
from this. Here is the opinion of Vasyl Zubkov, Chairman of the Central
Council of the Marine Transport Workers' Union: "The current policy is
to see to it that sea vessels be forced to be sold at throw-away prices.
Who is to blame? The state apparatus as a whole plus a lack of political
will in the top leadership. First the vessels were "snatched" by an offshore
company, transferring a part of their earnings through a settlement account
for the immediate needs of the Black Sea Shipping Company (BSSC), such
as paying wages, loans, and bailing out impounded vessels. Then things
were reoriented: the offshore company was subordinated directly to the
Ministry of Transport. Then came injunctions: pay for government telecommunications
($1.5 million) and cover other costs. Meanwhile, BSSC is running up new
debts: about twenty million in wage arrears alone."

The past week also saw an event testifying that society begins to recover
from the disease of election campaign pandering. Conductors appeared in
Odesa's trams and trolleys. This means passengers will have again to pay
fares, like in any other European city. The fare is 30 kopiykas. More than
24,000 single-use and 3,500 monthly transport tickets were sold on February
1. The transport people's earnings are thus increasing, but slowly. However,
the attitude of ticket collectors to hitchhikers (known as "rabbits" here)
in Odesa is liberal and selective (and not only in the year of the rabbit).

By Mykhailo AKSANIUK, The Day

Odesa

 

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