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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 

22 December, 1998 - 00:00

The same day Leonid Kuchma met with regional media people
Khmelnytsky's officially controlled regional press carried a new column,
"The Administration of the President of Ukraine Reports," with fantastic
poll allegedly carried out in Poltava, reading that "40% of the respondents
stated today that they would vote for Leonid Kuchma, considering that he
is securing progress in reform, has experience and perseverance."

The message was clear: follow the Poltava example where "centrist positions
have greater popularity." Just one thing was missing. The authors from
the Presidential Administration did not specify who had carried out the
polls and how. This reminds one of the old folk song "If I Were in Charge
in Poltava." In Khmelnytsky, another song is popular about how some were
sowing millet and others were threatening to trample it down. A joke, of
course...

However, the People's Deputies debating the situation in Ukraine's energy
park last week were in no mood for jokes. Their final diagnosis was: sheer
disaster. Of course, they had no way of knowing that two weeks ago, on
Sunday, a 86-year-old woman died in a fire in Volochysk (Khmelnytsky oblast)
precisely because of what is going on in this park. There was an unscheduled
electricity cutoff, so she lit a candle and then fell asleep without blowing
it out, never to wake up. Only recently people would live a hundred years
in Volochysk and other towns and villages, and die of natural causes. "Starting
in the 1990s, Ukraine's average life expectancy has dropped by two years,
to 67; in our oblast it was 69 years (63 for men and 74 for women)," the
local statistical department reports.

The word catastrophe resounded in the local council's conference hall
last week as the deputies agreed this was the only word to describe health
care in the oblast (and the audience included Centrists, Left, and Right).
When in real trouble political affiliations become of minor importance.

Another point on the agenda to strike up a lively discussion was whether
or not the oblast council's apparatus should be expanded. After the session
council chairman Mykola Prystupa explained to journalists that, having
more bureaucrats, he would be able to keep the "process of spending financial
resources" under tighter control. He also referred to Speaker Oleksandr
Tkachenko and his initiative in terms of programs of national economic
rebirth.

Could this initiative have prompted Mr. Kuchma's meeting with regional
media representatives and his statement about a referendum concerning the
"prolongation of certain transitory clauses of the Constitution"? This
question worried all the provincial public interested in politics. Some
felt sorry for the President's spokesmen who had to refute the ITAR-TARS
reports allegedly distorting his statements. Others did not bother about
politics and sang their favorite songs...

 

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