CANDIDATE PROFILE: Larysa Skoryk, Hromada Party (03/01/98)

CANDIDATE PROFILE: Larysa Skoryk, Hromada Party

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Talkative, candid and outspoken, Larysa Skoryk, is again running for national deputy to the Verkhovna Rada.

She is no longer associated with Rukh, the party through which she originally vaulted into politics, but now belongs to the Hromada Party and is the minister of culture in its shadow government. She is also an unbending critic of President Leonid Kuchma and has been since he was prime minister of Ukraine, she said.

The "Halychanka," as she calls herself, was born in Polish- controlled Ukraine in the 1930s and was one of the original members of Rukh. She served as a national deputy of the Verkhovna Rada in 1990-1994.

In February 1992, she began her break with Rukh during Rukh's acrimonious third congress, an event that ultimately split the organization. Ms. Skoryk joined together with other former Rukh leaders in the summer of 1992 to form the Congress of National-Democratic Forces (CNDF). Whereas the original Rukh formulated a position of "constructive opposition" to the newly elected president, Leonid Kravchuk, the CNDF, of which Ms. Skoryk was elected head, proposed a position of unequivocal support for the new president. The CNDF's position was that a newly independent country needed a strong president to guide it, and that opposition weakened the president, thereby weakening the state.

After failing to be re-elected in the 1994 national elections, she recently re-invigorated her political activism via the Hromada Party. Since her departure from Ukraine's Parliament, she also has established her own architectural firm, which specializes in church renovation, and has concentrated on academia.

Today Ms. Skoryk is running for office with 29 other candidates in Kyiv city electoral district No. 223, where many of Ukraine's government offices are located, including the Verkhovna Rada and the Presidential Administration Building. She has returned to the political arena with the same blunt talk that characterized her first four years in Ukraine's Parliament.

Sitting in an empty classroom in the National Institute of Art, where Ms. Skoryk is the head of the department of architecture, she said that she knew even in 1993, when Mr. Kuchma was appointed prime minister by President Leonid Kravchuk, that he was not right for Ukraine.

As the 50-something former deputy explained it, Mr. Kuchma was placed in the prime ministerial position by outside forces that do not want to see Ukraine become a world economic player. "For those who did not want to see Ukraine as a competitor he was a good prime minister and has been an even better president," said Ms. Skoryk. She explained that those entities are countries that have "divvied up the world economies," among them Russia and the United States.

"There is a plan that is being carried out so that Ukraine maintains a path that keeps it no more evolved than a third world country," said Ms. Skoryk.

She said that even in 1993 Mr. Kuchma, as prime minister, was not working for the development of a strong Ukrainian economy. "He rescinded the law on investments, which at the time experts called the best such law among the CIS countries," said Ms. Skoryk.

"It was obvious even then that he was working for the artificial bankruptcy of Ukrainian industry and the destruction of any chance for the development of small and medium business," she added.

She attacked the idea that the world must be made up of zones of economic interest so that the international economy functions smoothly. "There is no need for the illusion that the world has a stability based on economic zones of influence," she explained. "To find its space, a young country, especially, must fight to defend its interests in both its internal and foreign policies. The countries that can do that have patriotic and competent individuals in government."

Ms. Skoryk said she has been "heavily opposed" to Mr. Kuchma since 1993, but could not find a proper outlet through which to voice her concerns until now. She joined the Hromada Party when she realized that it would stand in formal opposition to the president. She called the Kuchma administration "absolutely not democratic."

"Immediately after an opposition party was formed and I understood that I could work to change the current government, I became a member.

"This government has installed a typical police state under the slogans of democracy and reform," continued Ms. Skoryk. She added that today the Verkhovna Rada is "perhaps the last hope of the people to defend the Constitution."

She cited the shutdown of the newspaper Pravda Ukrainy and an earlier move against a newspaper for which she worked, Opposition, which was closed down in 1995, as two obvious examples of the president's disregard for the Constitution and the guarantee of freedom of the press.

"One American patriot, I forget who it was, said that any good citizen must defend his country from the government," said Ms. Skoryk. "Today the government in power is not the government of Ukraine and not the government of an independent, democratic and strong Ukraine."

The Hromada Party is the salvation of Ukraine, believes Ms. Skoryk, and it has organized its opposition in just the nick of time. "The most difficult battle in Ukraine is being waged right now. It lies in the salvation of the country, which was declared and now has been destroyed, specifically in the last four years - economically, spiritually, defensively and ecologically," asserted Ms. Skoryk. "To maintain [independence], to rebuild [the country] and to give it security for all time" are the goals she delineates.

The Hromada Party has just the extensive, integral program that Ukraine needs to bring it out of its spiritual and material crisis, according to Ms. Skoryk.

The program, which she labeled "100 weeks to an honorable life," is a comprehensive plan that includes a new tax code, details for economic stimulation and social reform. She said the party has already submitted the plan to the Verkhovna Rada and to the Cabinet of Ministers. It calls for, among other things, a 50 percent cut in business taxes, payment of wage and pension arrears, and changes to the Constitution so that the prime minister is appointed by the Verkhovna Rada, not the president. She also accented the all-encompassing nature of the 100-week plan, stating that it also proposes methods by which the cultural and scientific sectors in Ukraine could be revitalized.

"We are not the only party in opposition," explained Ms. Skoryk, "but we are the only one with a real program that could be started today - but only if the government changes."

Although she said she had not analyzed who would be her toughest competition in the election, she said she was concerned only with the current administration and the current president. "It [the competition] will be with the government and those who support it," she said. "There is a paradox, which is the truth, as well. The government with which we are currently fighting supports practically all the centrist political organizations and the important leaders of the Communist Party of Ukraine."