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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 

15 December, 1998 - 00:00

Last week's most unpleasant surprise was the discovery that
Ex-Premier Pavlo Lazarenko is a citizen of Panama, a businessmen with bulging
foreign bank accounts. We thought he was Ukrainian and a public servant,
meaning that business was a taboo under the law. Considering what happened,
it would seem worthwhile to check all the other People's Deputies and people
in government, detect other "foreign subjects" (if any) and deport them
(at their own cost) to the countries where their passports were issued.
Take Yuliya Tymoshenko. She acts very much like a foreigner and her training
should be traced to a Tibetan monastery, for she possesses knowledge inaccessible
to anyone else: how to put together a deficit-free budget in a country
struggling to make ends meet. And her every speech in Parliament sounds
Chinese to the audience.

A team of researchers from Kyiv's Institute of Gerontology discovered
that people in Ukraine age twice as quickly as elsewhere in the world.
In other words, one lives two years in one here. What have we done to deserve
such a fate?

Meanwhile unpleasant surprises were many in Lutsk last week, too. In
fact, they could hardly be described as having local character. The Interior
Department Board of Volyn oblast made a public statement about the local
militia's sheer misery. No money for (a list too long to repeat here).
The Department's debts to the oblasts are (another long list), totaling
Hr 3.7 million. Finally, a message to the moneyed public: please help and
your patriotic contributions will be appreciated. Success is never blamed,
so generous sponsors will not have to worry about the law. From now on
the militia of Volyn will take jealous care of all such "interested parties."

One unwelcome surprise befell Vasyl Dmytruk, Chairman of the Volyn Oblast
Council. He announced that all farmers of the oblast supplying the largest
amount of milk from their cows will be paid premiums. "We don't need your
premiums. Better help us get the money due us for the previous supplies,"
was the response first from several villages in Kivertsi rayon and then
from a lot of other places. Official inquiries were made and it transpired
that the dairy plant in Lutsk had not paid the farmers since June (something
the Chairman of the Council ought to have known from the beginning) and
that many suppliers had stopped deliveries.

Finally, an unpleasant surprise was in the offing for the residents
of Lutsk's three most densely populated neighborhoods. The central heating
pipeline burst and the residents had to live through the biting frost in
their freezing apartments for three days. "How come the damn thing breaks
down when it gets especially cold?" they complained to the municipal authorities.
"Because the piping is rusting away," they were explained by Leonid Kyrylchuk,
Deputy Chairman of the City Council. Indeed, why should pipes be any different
from the rest of the equipment nationwide?

 

 

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