Editorial
On Tuesday of this week, during his first address to The United Nations General Assembly, US President Mr. Joseph Biden announced that his country would no longer serve as the world’s policeman. It was a most welcome change of policy and great news to the vast majority of Americans who have become tired and fed up with seeing their resources poured into bottomless pits — for example the twenty-year escapade in Afghanistan — while persons on the far right amassed ever greater amounts of riches, and the lot of the middle and lower classes deteriorated.
At page 10 of this edition we carry a Reuters report of efforts being made in Ukraine to eliminate the influence of oligarchs and their money in the politics of that country. In 2019 Mr. Volodymyr Zelenskiy won a landslide election on the basis of promises to reduce corruption. The central core of that problem has been the influence of oligarchs who have dominated the business field and wielded overarching influence in politics and the media since 1991. Under the new law, oligarchs are required to register as such, and to stay out of politics. They are “forbidden from financing political parties or taking part in privatisations.” Top officials including the president, the prime minister, and the head of the central bank are required to declare any dealings they either had or may have with any oligarchs. The Ukrainians have found it necessary to introduce the new law in order to “protect the country from powerful businessmen who have corrupted its political system for decades.”
What the people of Ukraine are attempting is necessary, indeed vital, to reverse what has come to be known worldwide as ‘the financialisation of political power’. Due to the nature of our constitutional and legal jurisprudence it may not be possible to introduce the measures which the Ukrainians have done, but we, the people of St. Kitts and Nevis, need to take heart from their example, and set about working very hard to reduce the level of corruption with which SCHEME UNITY has burdened our beloved country. We have chosen to describe corruption as a scourge not only because it fits the dictionary description, but because, in reality, it does cause serious economic setbacks, terrible pains, horrific sufferings, and great trauma.