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Shevchenko Meets East Village, Faces Tough Questions

M. Hu/Y. Omelchenko
New York, Nov. 1, 2008

Why had the government ignored basic necessary medical services in the rural areas while spending hundreds of million of hryvna on medical buildings in Kyiv?  What is the near term prognosis for the parliamentary elections?  How can Ukrainians studying abroad return to find employment in Ukraine?

These questions, along with others, were posed to Andriy Shevchenko, current Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, who came to the East Village in New York City for a community meeting at St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church.  Shevchenko, a former journalist at the Fifth Channel which grew in reputation for its unbiased coverage of the Orange Revolution, offered observations that drew from his years as a Ukrainian journalist and a lawmaker.

Shevchenko described the current conditions in Ukraine, where the political system remains in a state of flux, and where its economy is adversely affected by the global economic crisis. On the latter, he spoke of the global financial pinch arriving to Ukraine, driving lower investment flows into the country, and lower prices for commodity exports leaving it.  While the current situation remains grim, Shevchenko noted that Ukraine is experiencing the beginnings of a consolidation of the political landscape, and that Ukraine has the tools for the creation of a solid political structure that would be effective in implementing necessary reforms, especially those badly needed in the legal system.

Grievances and questions, some heated, dominated the open Q&A that followed Shevchenko’s  speech. Among those were issues of the government’s seemingly hypocritical stance against land privatization, issues of corruption, unfair funding distribution, and the bloc voting system that does not allow for cross-party individual candidate votes.  Shevchenko acknowledged the importance of these issues, emphasizing the upcoming 2010 gubernatorial and local election as an opportunity to bring more adequate representation and legislative power in the local regions.

Mr. Shevchenko arrived in the United States at the invitation of Yale University as a World Fellow, to learn the foreign and show Ukrainian achievements, to paraphrase Taras.  He stated that Ukraine trails behind other nations in number of students representing the country at the University.  Shevchenko also identified further avenues of cooperation between Yale and Ukraine, particularly in HIV/AIDS research and patient care projects.

Dr. Bohdan Oryshekevich, founder of the Ukrainian Student Association in the United States of America (USA-USA/Ukramerezha), organized and hosted the afternoon event, which brought together some well known faces in East Village’s Ukrainian American community, with Diaspora press, university students and professors from upstate NY to as far away as California. Self-Reliance New York Federal Credit Union co-sponsored this public service meeting with USA/USA.

While some key questions remained unanswered, the open floor vis-à-vis between a deputy and the public, with attendees exchanging ideas at the reception before and after the event, gave a sense of solidarity in purpose.  As one attendee noted, “Free speech is really practiced here.   There should be more meetings like this.”

The text is submitted to the Ukrainian Weekly