KIEV, March 28, /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine has overtly slid into outside administration by the West, Pyotr Simonenko, the leader of the country’s Communist Party said on March 28.
“It was external interference that pushed our country to the verge of a military conflict with the brotherly Russian people,” Simonenko said in his electoral programme.
“This country needs a new social contract in the form of a new Constitution today - the one that will return people’s rule and will guarantee civic, political, economic, and social rights to the people,” he said. “We need a range of irrevocable changes that will make people’s rule steadfast, will separate business from politics, and will return control over state power to the people.”
Simonenko believes that regions of the country and bodies of local and regional self-government should be delegated powers while the incumbent regional, city and district state administrations should be disbanded and their functions should go over to the executives committees of the relevant Councils (Soviets) that will be elected by universal vote.
He spoke in favor of an immediate ban on the propaganda of Nazism and political extremism and called for tighter measures towards protection of the monuments of culture, restoration of historical verity, and defense of the languages and culture of all the ethnic groups inhabiting the country.
“There’s a need for keeping up and consolidating the status of Ukraine as the state language while the Russian language should be given the status of a second state language,” Simonenko said with confidence.
To prevent a split of Ukraine, the Communists propose a stage-by-stage transition to a federated structure of the state under the permanent constitutional guarantees of the nation’s unity.
Simonenko indicated that the Communist Party had drafted an anti-crisis program, the main ideas of which were the nationalization of strategic sectors of the economy, state control over the country’s mineral wealth and natural resources, and a ban on the sales of agricultural land.
The Communists believe in the essentiality of severing all borrowings from the International Monetary Fund, revision of Ukraine’s membership of the World Trade Organization, and the sealing of borders for low-quality imports. To make these objectives attainable, the Communist Party proposes a progressive tax on the revenues of the rich and superrich, a tax on the capitals transferred outside the country and a state monopoly on the production of alcoholic beverages and cigarettes.
“Ukraine has turned into a hostage of geopolitical brawls between the West and Russia,” Simonenko said. “At the current stage, a neutral and non-aligned status would serve Ukraine’s interests best of all.”
On the economic plane, the Communist Party sees the country’s future as a member of the CIS Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Union, he said.