Elderly protesters call for Kuchmas ouster, freeze out Rada Speaker Moroz
sary of the constitution Saturday June 28 with a protest march through the streets of Kyiv.
Carrying red banners and portraits of Stalin and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, the mostly elderly demonstrators chanted slogans denouncing the anti-democratic constitution and President Leonid Kuchma. Kuchma must go! they cried.
After moving down Hrushevskiy Street to European Square, the crowd of approximately 3,000 made an unauthorized foray down the full length of Khreshchatyk. At Independence Square, they noisily passed a folk dance performance, part of the official celebrations that continued throughout the Constitution Day holiday weekend.
Police did not intervene. Drawing comparisons to the Bolshevik Revolution, Police General Volodymyr Budnikov said taking action against the demonstrators would trigger the kind of events that took place in 1917.
The protesters returned to European Square, site of the former Lenin Museum, where they were addressed by prominent leftist leaders and ordinary workers. The anti-people constitution repeatedly came under attack amid calls for restoration of socialism and unity with the brother peoples of Russia and Belarus.
Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko peppered his speech with Soviet-style statistics and metaphors. Since the constitution was ratified, life [in Ukraine] has gotten much worse, he said.
Symenko went on to predict the demise of the Ukrainian state: In the years of so-called independence, the country has turned into a garbage pit, into which the civilized countries throw their excrement: drug addiction, prostitution, violence, corruption and mafia.
Parliament Speaker Oleksandr Moroz, who was instrumental in the adoption of the constitution, drew jeers when he addressed the crowd. Near the podium, a man held a banner apparently aimed at moderate leftists. [We] Cannot Win Without Getting Rid of Provocateur Leaders, it read.
To have a better constitution, we need your representatives sitting in Parliament, Moroz said, advising leftists to unite during the next election and to vote for honest people.
Many in the crowd expressed hard-bitten nostalgia for the Soviet era. A 48-year-old woman demonstrator clutching a Down With the Anti-People Constitution banner, conceded that she had never actually read the document. I dont need to read it, I listen to the radio, she said. Besides, I dont have money to buy it, and I dont know where to buy it.
An elderly woman next to her said it was obvious even to those who have not read the constitution that it has been violated. The law promises the right to private property, she said. But they stole our savings in the bank, and the money we put away for our children too, she said.
