Everyone is talking about the sensational tape former Speaker Oleksandr Moroz has publicized, where the president of the country allegedly told the head of internal affairs to drag recalcitrant journalist by the you know what to Chechnya before the inconvenient journalist supposedly showed up headless in Mr. Moroz’s electoral district and his head at the unfortunate Socialist leader’s country house. I want to state here and now that I know Oleksandr Moroz, perhaps not terribly well, but well enough to state that he is about as honest as politicians get in this part of the world. I also know that with contemporary audio techniques, nobody can say whether the tape in question, as our journalist points out, is real or not. And after living through Watergate in the United States, a foul-mouthed president is no longer a shock. I simply cannot understand the logic. As my readers know, I have said some fairly unpleasant things about how things are going in this country, and to the credit of its leadership I have never had any personal problems because of it. I simply cannot believe that somebody saying whatever on the Internet in a country where only 2% of the population have access to a computer (let alone the Internet) could be a big enough irritant for the president to take an active role in removing him from the scene. Something simply does not smell right here.
We all still hope the Heorhy Gongadze will be found alive and well. He made a healthy contribution to this nation’s journalistic discourse, and I would hope he continues to make it, perhaps after a period of hiding out (an inalienable right of the male gender). I might criticize President Kuchma, but I cannot believe what I saw in the transcript of the tape People’s Deputy Moroz produced. I have been here long enough to have seen all kinds of skullduggery, but not this. Say it isn’t so.
