LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (01/03/93)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

U.S. needs more than two parties

Dear Editor:

Now that the national elections are over, our totally and hopelessly corrupt two-party political system can get back to business as usual with its "professional" politicians, surely making reporters and political analysts alike happy again now that there seem to be no more threats to the system from an independent or from the emergence of a third major political party onto the national scene. However, mark my words, they are too hasty in taking themselves off guard, for they do not seem to be hearing the growing rumblings across the land, that are growing in intensity with each passing day. They are burying their heads in the sand like ostriches.

Some people are saying that now that Gov. Bill Clinton has won the election, "we" are supposed to rally around him and fully support him. Hogwash! Others are free to do as they wish, but I am confident that President-elect Clinton will most assuredly do enough damage to the country and its economy without our help. I cannot in all good conscience give my moral support to another Nero who will cheerfully play his harp (read saxophone) while Rome burns.

Now Mr. Clinton is seemingly campaigning throughout the country for the support of former Perot supporters, who champion real change, not some fictitious hybrid. As a former supporter of Ross Perot, I steadfastly and unswervingly refuse to be co-opted by President-elect Clinton, thereby losing what voice I may have once had in the democratic process. I no longer believe in, or have any faith whatsoever in, the present ailing two-party system, which is now on its deathbed.

We would do better to harken back to the words of the founding fathers of this nation and take heed. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson both specifically warned against the dangers of political parties, which they feared would entrench themselves on the national scene, wholly ignoring the real needs and interests of all the people. This is what we have to endure now.

What is the solution? Perhaps a true political party of the people on the national scene, possibly a third major political party, for which there seems to be such a crying need at the present time. We need more democracy, not less, with fresh input from the people.

Alas, we as citizens of this once great land have a long way to go to reclaim our government. As of now, it is still "we," the people, and "they," the so-called "professional" politicians. The new faces elected to Congress this year will soon become just as corrupt as the system that they bought into. We need real changes, not just the eternal tinkering on the edges of a problem.

We need a second, albeit peaceful, revolution now to reclaim what was once ours: a government responsive to all the people's needs, not just to some politically powerful few. Perhaps the formation of a third major political party would be a good start. And why stop there? Do we no longer have the guts that this nation's founding fathers had when they dared to carry through a revolution? I am sorry to say that we as a nation no longer do. However, I would love to be proven wrong.

Be what it may, if things really remain basically unchanged, we risk an implosion at some time in the near future. It should make for an interesting future in the near term, for history has taught us that genuine and needed change will not be long denied.

Paul Nedwell
Wappingers Falls, N.Y.

Lempert denigrates Ukraine's constitution

Dear Editor:

I would like to comment on the two-part article by David Lempert on Ukraine's draft Constitution, which appeared in November 15 and 22 issues of The Ukrainian Weekly. It denigrates the proposed Ukrainian Constitution to the point of indecency.

It starts with a reference to Orwell's "Animal Farm," implying presumably that Ukrainian leaders are no better than Orwellian pigs, and goes on to say that the proposed Constitution is worse than Lenin's and is no better than Stalin's and other Soviet Constitutions. In fact, it states that Stalin's 1936 Constitution was more democratic than the one now proposed by the Ukrainian leaders.

The article goes on to say that the proposed 500 elected representatives, or one per 140,000 people, cannot ensure democracy and protect Ukraine's citizens, and predicts dire consequences for Ukraine in the future, even reminding us "not only of purges but of discrimination and harassment of Jews, women and others." It also predicts that Ukrainian elites will exploit the people to the hilt, and that Ukraine will become an Orwellian "1984" society.

Such slander should not be published in The Ukrainian Weekly. Obviously Mr. Lempert is an anti-Ukrainian individual who considers Ukrainians to be a bunch of "animals" who could never live in a normal democratic society, but who would devour each other given the slightest opportunity to do so.

The U.S. Constitution to which Mr. Lempert refers with such awe did not prevent discrimination against Blacks and others (vide the recent riots in Los Angeles) or the concentration of about 80 percent of the total wealth in the hands of about 10 percent of the population (the elite). Also, his statement that the U.S. Constitution provides for a representation of 30,000: 1 is certainly not confirmed in fact. The 435-member House of Representatives for over 240 million people makes it one per over half a million people. And in the Senate, each California senator represents over 10 million people.

Ukrainian numbers are closer, for example, to the British where 635 members of the House of Commons represent about 60 million people. In fact, Great Britain, which is one of the oldest and best democracies of them all, has no constitution at all, which merely goes to show that it is not the Constitution that counts, but rather the way people and the government live with each other on a day-to-day basis.

Why don't we give Ukraine a chance to organize itself the best it can, to write and adopt a constitution that it wishes to adopt, and see how all of this will work in a few years, before defaming and criticizing everything as "slogans and platitudes?" Whatever constitution is adopted, I am sure that with a free Ukraine there won't be millions of Ukrainians starved to death and other countless millions rotting in the gulags in Siberia.

George Primak
Pierrefonds, Quebec

| Home Page |