Valery Pustovoitenko's NDP comrades finally heaved a sigh of relief: the clouds over the Premier's head have dispersed and Vitaly Oluiko, head of NDP's regional organization and local state administration, proved wrong in his trepidations. "Few realize that this man did not merely join the government but also made a self-sacrifice. Years from now people will probably say that these Cabinet decisions were justified," he wrote in Podilski visti (Podillian news).
As for such self-sacrifice, here in Khmelnytsky everything is clear as day – or should I say candlelight? "Scheduled" electricity shutoffs have started in the city. Bohdan Telenko, local Republican leader who has just returned from a party convention, explains: "I will not dwell on how much heart Valery Pustovoitenko is putting into his job as Premier. All I want to say is that I agree with Yevhen Marchuk who believes that talk about the Cabinet's resignation and starting impeachment procedures may serve as the final indication to the West that our country is unstable."
And the Cabinet decisions, supposedly to be justified years from now, are being unanimously approved by the farmers, in the sense that they must harvest sugar beets manually in most cases, because low-octane fuel has vanished from the market as a result of administrative price restrictions. They are sure that much beet will remain to be covered by snow, along with fields still to be sown with winter wheat. They wonder what Mr. Kuchma, Verkhovna Rada, and the Cabinet headed by the self-sacrificial Premier will have to say when worse comes to worst as it surely will.
On provincial markets, with sluggish business getting slower almost by the day, local sellers, for want of anything better to do, philosophize on the grave situation that has developed. Those who used to bring heaps of merchandise from the West and are now hard put to sell anything feel sure that Leonid Kuchma is prepared to sacrifice Viktor Yushchenko and that nothing will help the long-suffering hryvnia if he does.
Khmelnytsky's regional department for social protection held an expanded conference last week. Managers of homes for the elderly, invalid shelters, and orphanages were invited. They asked the local authorities where to get the money to purchase hats, shawls, socks, stockings, fuel, detergents, and disinfectants for their charges. By way of response they heard accusations of showing an "irresponsible" attitude to budget subsidies and that they had to learn to "economize" on their spending. They ought to have learned from Mr. Pustovoitenko's experience, but they do not want to: their current budgets cover only 40% of their actual needs, and most of that in the form of mutual write-offs.
The heating season was to start on October 15 officially. It did not, not in Khmelnytsky. In a word, this week marks our entry to the next cold and hungry winter.
