What Do I Expect from Kuchma-2?

The impossible!

Our readers have responded enthusiastically to The Day’s proposal to express their opinion about what we both individually and as a society expect from the reelected President in the next months and years. We publish today a few letters whose authors take entirely different stands on and approaches to this problem. The emotional heat of some viewpoints is counterbalanced by the systemic approach of others, while specific expert proposals are, in our opinion, quite rational and pragmatic.

MILITARY SECURITY

This state has no military doctrine. It should be developed, adopted, and approved by a presidential decree or a respective resolution of Verkhovna Rada. The President still has no levers to control the structures officially entrusted with wielding force. In case of war, he will only be the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, while the very idea of the Armed Forces needs to be spelt out more clearly. Under existing law, the Armed Forces of Ukraine include only ground forces, the Air Force, Air Defense troops, and the Navy. And what about other military formations?

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including its chief, are not part of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. I think the newly-appointed secretary of this structure, General of the Army Yevhen Marchuk, will rectify the situation.

To build a state and consolidate its independence, defense, and inviolability of borders, one has to have a clear idea of how to do so.

The border with Russia — 1576 km land and 500 km water — has not been delineated on the official legal level for eight years. This allows smugglers, armed criminals, and illegal emigrants to freely penetrate our territory. How can one put his house in order if it has no door?

The borders with Russia must be delimited, i.e., drawn on geographic maps. There is no more question of demarcation.

DAILY BREAD

How did the harvest turn out this year? The country found itself without fuel when it was time to bring in the grain. Business people did have fuel, but the state did not. On a fine windless day, a wheat field has up to 60 kg of grain per hectare falling off. And there are tens and hundreds of thousands of hectares and hence losses. The wheat gets overripe, but there is nothing to harvest it with. Which of the government officials was brought dressed down and punished for the loss of bread in Ukraine in 1999? This country should have a reserve of fuels and lubricants concentrated in the regions for the whole period of seasonal fieldwork.

We must build the Odesa oil terminal as soon as possible. Let the government only not hamper Liubomyr Buniak from finishing the Odesa-Brody oil pipeline. He does not even need help.

UKRAINIAN LANGUAGE

Why do officials from Cabinet and Presidential Administration members to employees of oblast and district administrations violate the language law?

The state appears to have laws that can be breached, without anybody being punished. There are also laws that can be breached, but not by all. No controllers? But Ukraine has 150,000 oversight employees at various ministries and agencies. The reason is perhaps different. Double standards. A double game.

LOANS

Do not ask foreign creditors for more money. It will take us a hundred years to repay the $13 billion debt we have. One should, first of all, channel loans to agriculture and the food processing sector. Such loans should only be extended to those collective farms which have sown winter crops and plowed the soil. Collective farms on the verge of extinction should be barred from credits. What is needed here is a funeral not intensive care. The land should be transferred to private hands, accompanied by an official deed of property rights.

All back wages and pensions must be paid off. No money? There is money, what is not there is the desire to distribute it. 50% of the money in this country is in circulation outside the banking sphere. Borrow from business people and your advisors, but give pensioners their miserable pension.

The main thing is not to spoil the generation of those who are now 10- 15. We must raise them as normal and conscientious Ukrainians who will respect themselves, the land on which they were born and are growing, their language, culture, and age-old traditions, and know the true history of Ukraine. There will only be 10-11 million people like this. The remaining 30-32 million will remain Homo Sovieticus, speaking in surzhyk (mixture of Russian and Ukrainian —Ed. ). It will take Ukraine a long time to rise from its knees.