It is common knowledge that one must be careful with words. This particularly applies to masters of the pen. Still opportune are today the words of the French philosopher, physicist, and mathematician Rene Descartes: “Verify the meaning of words, and you will save mankind from half of their delusions.”
As if to remind us of this maxim, a respected Ukrainian agency has reported this today: “Dzhemilev is to pay his first official visit to Dnipropetrovsk oblast.”
On this occasion, the Den editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna has written the following in her Facebook page: “Like most of the others, I respect Dzhemilev very much. I take an interest in the efforts of Kolomoisky’s team. But… Official visits inside a state? This seems to be a wrong style. Indeed, the sense of proportion is the most complicated philosophical category.”
“Official visit? I don’t know,” Hryhorii Perepelytsia, director of the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy, told The Day. “An official visit can only be paid by an official juridical person. Since when has the Mejlis been an international organization in this country?”
Ihor Zhaloba, head of the Diplomatic and Consular Service Department, believes that those who spread this information have lost the sense of proportion. “How can a Ukrainian parliament member go on an official visit to Dnipropetrovsk oblast? Are all the MPs going now to pay official visits on the territory of Ukraine? It is nonsense,” he told The Day.
In his words, somebody has made a mistake here – either the Dnipropetrovsk governor’s advisor Borys Treigerman, whom UNIAN reports as saying that “Mustafa Dzhemilev, a Crimean Tatar national movement activist, chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People in 1991-2013, a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is expected to pay his first official visit to the Dnipropetrovsk region on June 17,” or the agency itself which did not attach much importance to the words “official visit.” Mr. Zhaloba thinks both of them should correct this mistake.
And masters of the pen, if they really consider themselves as such, must really heed Rene Descartes’ time-honored words.
