One of the participants in the news conference after Yevhen Marchuk, head
of Parliament's Committee for Social Policy and Labor, received his web-site
and described it as an event the importance of which matches the appearance
of the first man in space.
Indeed, the first Ukrainian politician gaining access to Internet was
an extraordinary occurrence against the backdrop of the existing administration's
trite unimaginative conduct and unimpressive intellectual level. Characteristically,
there were many young people at the news conference. One might wonder about
the expedience of using Internet now that most people in Ukraine live level
with or below the poverty line. As though forestalling this question, Mr.
Marchuk declared that web-site's key idea was to secure "social as well
as personal evolution, in the Ukrainian context, one step at a time." In
other words, a modern Ukrainian politician has to act as a locomotive pulling
ahead the rest of the nomenklatura from their current intellectual and
technological level.
Among other things, Mr. Marchuk pointed out that keeping Ukrainian politics
closed was the main problem, particularly with regard to who are the authors
of major political decisions, how they approach them, and the clarity and
predictability of the stands they take. Of course, any degree of openness,
mental or public, by various politicians was out of the question.
When asked by The Day about examples and trends showing such
closed Ukrainian politics, Mr. Marchuk said: "Here's a very good example:
Ukrainian-IMF cooperation. Has anyone here seen the program? And this document
is important to us all. Has anyone bothered to ask any of the younger Ukrainians
what they think of this program? We must remember that they will be the
ones to pay off all these loans. What does any of us know about why this
program was approved, except that Ukraine needs such loans badly? They
decided everything for you, launching this program, leaving you to face
the consequences. This is what I call keeping the Ukrainian politics closed."
Yet, Mr. Marchuk went on to say, when millions of Ukrainians are preoccupied
with when exactly they are going to receive their long overdue monthly
pay, this "concept" leaves one faced with the priority of accessing web-sites,
to broach such political subjects being well informed. Being so far the
only Ukrainian politician having access to Internet, he stated that he
wanted to work to build Ukraine's international image which he thought
worth a great deal, determined precisely by the amount of foreign investment.
Comparing what we have in Ukraine to what they have elsewhere in Eastern
Europe leads one to realize that the Ukrainian image is lamentably low.
Mr. Marchuk stressed that he understood this image only in terms of serving
the national interests and that he did not intend to use the Internet to
wash the dirty Ukrainian linen in public, worldwide (incidentally, this
is precisely what quite a few politicians claiming high government post
are doing, he added).







