Last week, the authorities started a new campaign to discredit non-governmental organizations which receive financial support from international sponsors and thereby, allegedly, pose a major threat to Ukraine’s national security. Some of the campaign initiators have been scared by the recent events in Georgia, others by the Russian elections, and many are just afraid of Yushchenko and suspect everyone and everything that comes from the West (even Benjamin Franklin on a hundred-dollar bill) of promoting him. I think the threats are overestimated: not only is Ukraine unlike Russia, it is not Georgia, either.

It is amazing how the authorities’ and the Communist leader’s positions in this matter happened to coincide. On 4 December, Petro Symonenko made a sharp public statement condemning outside interference into Ukraine’s internal affairs and proposed to set up a parliamentary committee of inquiry with a mandate to inspect organizations funded by international donors.

Symonenko was speaking at the Supreme Rada session. He voiced his concern about the US-assisted deposition of “legitimate state authorities” (who, as you know, had rigged the ballot) in Georgia. He is also worried about “the risk of replicating the Yugoslav, Georgian or Russian democratization scenario”, about the “activities of various so-called independent non-governmental groups receiving grants from abroad in order to lobby for the economic interests of transnational corporations, political interests of imperialistic centres of influence and to establish puppet regimes throughout the world”. Of course, Mr Symonenko does not mean Russia, since the Russian capital investors’ economic interests here are lobbied by the Ukrainian state itself, or, more accurately, by its top-ranking officials. Another cause for the CPU leader’s anxiety is “the funding of sociological centres that impose their opinion”…

Thus, on 11 December, the majority MPs, Communists and five Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc members voted in favour of forming the Supreme Rada ad hoc committee of inquiry “to establish the facts of foreign intervention into the funding of election campaigns in Ukraine through non-governmental organizations receiving grants from other states”. The committee will comprise representatives of all factions and MP groups headed by Communist Valeriy Mishura.

The new campaign harbinger was Mykhailo Pohrebinsky, known to the general public as the Director of Kyiv Centre for Political and Conflict Studies and to much fewer people as a free-lance advisor to the Presidential Administration Head and the SDPU(o) leader Viktor Medvedchuk. It was he who saw a “potential challenge to Ukraine’s national security” in the activities of think tanks funded by international sources, an idea he shared with the readers of the “National Security and Defence” magazine that the Razumkov Centre published for the roundtable “Non-governmental Think Tanks in Ukraine: Supply and Demand”.

Among the roundtable speakers was an employee of the Pohrebinsky-headed Centre, arguing that experts from non-governmental organizations funded from abroad should never be engaged in public consultations with the government or in decision-making on the matters of national importance, and in particular, they should be expelled from all consultative bodies under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The official mass media ignored the issues that were broadly discussed at the roundtable of mutually beneficial cooperation between NGOs and the government, and of their impact on public sentiment in the country. Instead, they released an avalanche of criticism against international grant recipients (whom they unfailingly dub as “grant-eaters”) and donors’ aid to the third sector in general.

Yet what are the authorities afraid of, unless they plan to organize unfair elections, massive falsifications and voters’ intimidation? Or do they? The idea suggests itself as the authorities are yet again, like in the run-up to the 2002 elections, trying to bring the non-governmental sector into disrepute with a view to getting a complete license before elections in which they have no chance of winning honestly.

While presenting the proposed resolution in Parliament, the CPU leader, the main inspiration for the formation of the committee, underscored the necessity to inspect non-governmental organizations for their “abiding by the law” and for “their activities’ compliance with Ukraine’s national interests”. If need be, he maintained, law enforcement should be involved in the inquiry. One can rest assured: as soon as there is a special committee in place, there will be such a need.

Whereas the “abiding by the law” is more or less clear a notion (although the law itself is full of lacunae and inconsistencies), the “national interests” are a fuzzy category. Who has ever seen them listed in any official (or unofficial, for that matter) document? No such list exists in Ukraine. Neither the two presidents, nor the four Parliaments, nor even ten governments or hundreds of political parties have contrived, over 12 years of the country’s independence, to define Ukraine’s national interests. The Law “On Fundamentals of National Security of Ukraine” passed in June 2003, set “priorities concerning the national interests”, but did not specify what those interests are. So what is the committee going to check? What benchmarks will it be using to assess the NGO activities? Will it be basing its approaches on the controlling authorities’ interpretation of the national interests, or on that of law enforcement structures or secret services? Knowing their “objectivity” and “impartiality”, one can easily predict the inspection outcome.

On the other hand, the Communist Party’s initiative may yield useful results: the parliamentary committee may end up compiling a list of Ukraine’s national interests, and the Supreme Rada may vote for it (as promptly as it did for the committee founding)… And then the real fun will start. There are a lot of smart, well-trained people in the country eager to be given an inspecting tool and be shown an object. They are ready to scrutinize everything and everybody. Hopefully, they will examine the host of state power bodies’ decisions running counter to Ukraine’s national interests. They may, for example, analyze some of the budget expenditures, study the privatization consequences, ask questions about the officials’ Mercedes cars (each worth USD $100000) and multibillion loans made against governmental guarantees, pore over the text of the SES agreement or evaluate the reverse-oil-pumping and gas-transportation-consortium projects. Next, they may check the parliamentary factions’ voting a propos the most “bribe-intensive” bills for its compliance with the country’s national interests… Should the committee do that, it will hardly have any time left for inspecting NGOs and voluntary funds: so incomparable are the scales of their activities and damage inflicted to the state. Should the committee do that, it will help our voters to make an informed choice on 31 October 2004.

Yet let us return to our main topic and remind the leftist opposition, who have formed a tactical alliance with those in power, that during the last elections, when the authorities declared open war on civil society and bullied the unwanted candidates, nobody but NGOs raised their voice to protect democracy, withstand the enormous administrative pressure and advocate all candidates’ equal access to the mass media.

Could the Communists, Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc members and majority deputies who backed the resolution have forgotten how in January-March 2002 they themselves (being candidates) used roundtables, organized by NGOs with international (German, British, American) donors’ financial support, to present their platforms to the experts, journalists and public? For them, it was a unique opportunity to convey their ideas through the media invited to cover the roundtables to millions of their countrymen and countrywomen, and to do it in the course of a free, democratic discussion. None of the donors imposed their opinions on those candidates, none asked them to lobby for anything. Do the Communists and Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc members perceive such an influence on the election process as detrimental to our national interests?

Presumably, the committee will not overlook the public criticism of sociological services expressed by some oppositional politicians. Some of them disagree with their low ratings; others doubt that sociology should be trusted in the first place. What is the way out? Dissatisfied with the low rates of popular support registered by non-governmental sociological centres, they can join the authorities’ effort, , in ruining their reputation. Then everyone will be happy with the sociological data produced on the government’s orders, of which there will be plenty during the elections. Besides, the presidential candidates will be able to satisfy their vanity with the opinion polls conducted by their HQs. You will remember that a week before the 1999 presidential elections Yevhen Marchuk’s HQ experts claimed their candidate’s rating was as high as 20%…

I would like to remind you that Ukraine’s leading sociological centres whose data are universally trusted and whose services are sought by the politicians of all ideologies (from the Party of Regions to the RUKH, from “Labour Ukraine” to “Fatherland” and even by the President) have gained their reputation for high-quality research and surveys carried out with the financial support of international donors.

There is one point, however, where I agree with Mr Symonenko wholeheartedly: the foreign funding (from both the West and the East) of a specific candidate’s election campaign cannot be tolerated. If Yushchenko, Yanukovych or Symonenko decide to found a non-governmental organization under their headquarters calling it, say, “Social Security”, and this shell structure starts receiving money or other resources (equipment, informational support, etc) from abroad to pay for this candidate’s election campaign - it should be stopped immediately. Yet I would welcome international assistance, including financial, from both the West and the East, given to ensure a level playing field to all candidates and their unlimited access to the media, to enable them to communicate their ideas and platforms to the electorate, and to resist administrative pressure. I hope this is what the Communist leader wants, too.

Many tend to associate international funding with attempts to prop up Yushchenko. I believe it is high time that the politicians suffering from spy-mania and waging a war on “grant-eaters” demythologized the man: not all of those who share western values and standards of human rights and democracy are Yushchenko’s soldiers or agents. By the same token, not all of the Russian vodka lovers align themselves with Putin’s admirers.

Having said that, why did the MPs who voted for the committee formation ignore their colleagues’ proposal to analyze the Russian influence on Ukrainian elections exerted through the Russian media present in Ukraine, through Russian spin doctors residing in Ukrainian top offices in Pechersk, through the Russian President’s advisor who consults for the Ukrainian President’s entourage on a permanent basis? Too one-sided does our multi-vector foreign policy look from this perspective.

There should be no doubt that the state is the largest “grant-eater”. Every state institution gets grants for almost everything: army reform; examining ammunition stocks; dismantling weapons and military equipment; training and maintaining peacekeeping units; establishing a system of export control of arms sales; reforming law enforcement and secret services; monitoring and upgrading electric power facilities; re-equipping border and customs services; computerizing banking, tax and budget systems; decommissioning coal-mines; reforming agriculture; creating information networks in public administration; drafting and evaluating legislation; training public servants; optimizing circulation of papers at all levels of government; improving public planning systems; introducing new technologies, curricula and medicines, etc, etc, etc. The Cabinet of Ministers receives grants, the Supreme Rada receives grants, the Presidential Administration receives grants, the Council for National Security and Defence receives grants as do practically all ministries and agencies. They receive hundreds of millions of grant funds per year. Over the years of independence that has amounted to billions of dollars. You may see that the state draws on international assistance in the spheres directly relating to national security. And neither the authorities (who are using international donors’ money today), nor the opposition (who used to do it yesterday) or the media make much ado about it. This assistance is often granted on certain specific terms, sometimes rather tough, sometimes even humiliating. It is true, but one cannot blame foreign donors: they know what our state is like and do not trust it very much.

The ZN readers might not know that the lion’s share of international aid is distributed in Ukraine with the active and direct participation of the diverse state structures that are also its main beneficiaries. However, the parliamentary committee’s mandate does not envision inspecting state structures ; the committee initiators never thought about it, while the presiding Communist MP Adam Martyniuk did not put the pertinent proposals their colleague-deputies submitted in writing to the vote.

Non-governmental organizations receive foreign grants, too, although in incomparably smaller amounts. While over the last 12 years public institution have gotten over USD $4 billion in foreign aid, non-governmental organizations receive far more modest funds. For instance, one of the most generous foreign donors, International Renaissance Foundation [the Soros Fund’s representation in Ukraine], annually finances projects with a total budget of USD $ 5-6 million, distributed amongst 500-600 NGOs. You can see the difference.

The grant awarding procedure is absolutely transparent: the media publish notices of contests among potential grantees and their results; all information about the grant size, activities and winners is readily available. The authorities are not half as open. Nor are the critics of “grant-eaters”. Thus, Mykhailo Pohrebinsky’s Centre was the only institution of the ones surveyed in preparation for the above roundtable that refused to disclose information on their funding sources, offering no reasons for the refusal.

Remarkably, unlike public institutions, NGOs are given grants subject to no preliminary conditions. I know that from my own experience. No one dictates how we should conduct surveys or tries to shape their outcomes. What we coordinate with our clients are the survey topic, budget and timeframes. Donors get our reports on survey results after the latter are published.

This attack against the non-governmental sector reveals the authorities’ weakness and helplessness. Had they felt strong and confident, they could have found a better application to their time and effort. But they do not. They are still in a state of intellectual crisis leading to complete havoc in domestic policy and ceaseless rushing from one extreme to another in foreign policy. The crisis is caused, among other reasons, by the authorities’ rejection of the third sector’s intellectual potential.

The opposition is not active enough, either: they lack original ideas or promising proposals. Both the authorities and the opposition need alternative evaluations, policy options and scenarios. And they need to look for them immediately, while there still are NGOs ready to offer such alternatives to them.

In fact, non-governmental think tanks are mediators between the government and the society. They identify weaknesses and threats to sustainable development, suggest ways of addressing them, help translate ideas into actual policies and provide opportunities for a dialogue between key political players. By proposing alternative solutions, they facilitate social lobbying, and bring pressure to bear on the authorities for improving the quality of public policy. Furthermore, non-governmental think tanks are an efficient tool of exercising public control of the government. They have also a vital role to play in setting societal goals and values, and forming public opinion. These are universal truths accepted and incorporated not only by developed democracies, but also in our neighbour-countries. However, Ukrainian state power bodies have failed to recognize and be guided by them.

Parliament, instead of creating a legislative framework auspicious for civil society’s development, has decided to audit NGOs, as if there had been few structures, apart from the Rada, keen on controlling and restraining the third sector. The executive authorities are reluctant to listen to alternative proposals, particularly those geared towards enhancing their responsibility and transparency. They seem to feel more comfortable in the shadow than in the open. Oftentimes, officials at different levels of public administration turn down well-prepared and timely proposals just because they were developed by a think tank that their superiors frown at.

I do not mean to say that all of the ideas put forth by independent non-governmental centres are discarded. Some of them are included in various policy papers, the President’s speeches, draft laws, even political parties’ programmes, sometimes without the author’s knowledge or any reference thereto. Intellectual property is not an issue here - the authors would be happy to see those ideas implemented.

Interestingly, while the authorities torpedo independent funds and centres, the pro-presidential forces organize regional “civil forums” in support of constitutional reform, which (should it succeed) is likely to conserve the current political regime and to deprive citizens of their right to direct elections. To this end, the authorities resort to the services of NGOs under their control, such as the Bar Association, the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and the like).

The campaign was launched to bolster the President’s first constitutional reform project. However, the President changed his mind and called off his draft law from the Constitutional Court. He supported another draft instead. Then another one and the fourth, each new draft being contrary to the previously proposed one. It does not matter, though, as the campaign is going on. People do not know what they are supposed to support, but that does not matter, either. At the end of the process that has welled, purportedly, in the depths of civil society, its true instigators will thank their active compatriots and announce what exactly the latter have been supporting all this time. But first the initiators have to clarify it for themselves. The authorities planned to hold the all-Ukrainian civil forum in September, but the bosses do not seem to know yet what they want from it. So they postponed the forum until February. In the meantime, the activists are commissioned to elect delegates. It is all mere nonsense and profanation, but local governments take their instructions seriously. If you do not believe me, go and attend a local forum in your city or town : you will return to the times of Brezhnev’s stagnation.

According to eye-witnesses, local civil forums look and sound like the Communist Party conferences of the late 1970s. Do you remember discussions of Leonid Brezhnev’s unfading masterpieces (the trilogy “Malaya Zemlia”, “Revival” and “Virgin Land”) at long meetings organized by oblast authorities and party leaders that ended invariably in general admiration and rejoicing? Nowadays people have no time to read the documents, the more so that they still do not know which draft law those in power will favour. “So local authorities gather 200-300 people having a vague idea of what is going on and why they have been disturbed at their workplace. The presidium gives floor to 3-4 speakers highlighting hardships of our everyday life. Speeches are forthright, critical of the regime. Then the chair person asks the audience: Do you like such a life? - No! (in chorus, sincerely) - Do you want to live as they do in Europe? - Yes! (in chorus, sincerely) - Do you support the constitutional reform that will bring a better life? - Yes! (in chorus, sincerely) - Then vote for draft law number X (we won’t read it, all hurry to return to their workplaces) and for the list of delegates to the national forum in Kyiv (we won’t discuss the list, all are in a hurry). No secret ballot, just raise the paper you got at the entrance. The majority are in favour. Hooray! (sign of relief) You are free.” This is a story told by a participant of the forum in Shevchenkivsky district of Kyiv. I do not think the forums in other regions differ much. This is the authorities’ idea of a civil society. It does not make trouble.

Differential treatment of different “civil societies” on the authorities’ part is fully in line with its mode of behaviour on the eve of the elections, determined by their desire to get rid of every form of internal and external supervision.

The mass media is not a problem any more: it controls, directly or indirectly, almost all influential media. Their editorial boards continue to receive regular “temnyky” whereby anonymous “analysts” recommend which events should be covered in what tenor, which politician should comment on what episode, which occasions should be associated with the SDPU(o) to distinguish this pro-presidential party from the others. Now the authorities are stepping up the war on NGOs, striving to discredit them in the eyes of the population and deny them access to information networks. If they fail to enter all the “witches” onto the black list of “grant-eaters”, they will think of other ways. Enviable ingenuity and enthusiasm…

What worries the authorities is the external factor, whose impact is more difficult to neutralize. However, it is easy to guess what techniques will be chosen to do that: de-voicing ambassadors of the leading Western counties by insistently accusing them of meddling with Ukraine’s internal affairs; dishonouring major monitoring organizations - Council of Europe, OSCE, etc; blocking international donors’ activities in Ukraine. You might remember that one of the four conditions of Kuchma’s brief meeting with Bush and Yanukovych’s visit to Washington was the registration of two American funds in Ukraine. The visits being over, the authorities feel free to oust donors from the country.

The West is also wary of some of the Ukrainian authorities’ proposals that, on the face of it, are purely economic. For instance, potential investors tend to interpret Serhiy Tyhypko’s desire to settle all Ukraine’s debts to the IMF ahead of schedule not only as a message about the country’s economic growth, but also as the pro-presidential forces’ wish to do away with the IMF control of budgetary process on the eve of the elections.

Prime Minister Yanukovych promised that the next presidential elections in Ukraine would be fair, transparent and democratic. He did so while abroad. His predecessor promised the same before the parliamentary elections, again, while visiting foreign countries. We know the price of Kinakh’s promises; we will soon learn how much Yanukovych’s word costs…

These next elections are too important for the country and its citizens to let the authorities cancel them or hold elections with no real choice offered to the people.

From Anatoliy HRYTSENKO’s interview to ZN #42(315), 28 October 2000:

Non-governmental centres are an important component of the civil society. They should not be viewed as an opposition striving to undermine the incumbent authorities or sell our state secrets away. The scarce law enforcement resources would be better used if applied to combat corruption that has paralyzed the country or investigate dubious foreign trade transactions that have cost billions to the state. The authorities and the population will only benefit from it.

Three years have elapsed since the Razumkov Centre President told this to the ZN reporters. Has the situation improved? Hardly. Yet analysts from non-governmental think tanks are not to blame for that, neither are their donors…