The EPP declares its full solidarity with Christian Democratic People’s Party

Resolution of the EPP Political Bureau of 17 March 2009

On parliamentary elections from the Republic of Moldova

The EPP closely follows political developments from the Republic of Moldova on the eve of the parliamentary elections which will take place on 5th April 2009. As a democracy in transition and as a country which has proposed the strategic objective the European integration, Moldova is to deepen its political and economic reforms, to adjust its laws and practices to the European standards. The separation of the totalitarian soviet past and the advancement to democracy must be strengthened by strong institutions of the rule of law and total respect for human rights.

Putin Is Approved as Prime Minister

MOSCOW – Russia’s Parliament overwhelmingly confirmed Vladimir V. Putin as prime minister on Thursday, completing a carefully managed departure from the presidency in a manner that left him the country’s dominant politician and with a clear grip on power.

Mr. Putin, out of office less than 26 hours, received 392 votes in the 450-seat Duma, Parliament’s lower house.

After a brief endorsement from his protégé and presidential successor, Dmitri A. Medvedev, Mr. Putin once again commanded the stage. He gave a 45-minute speech, proposing a series of domestic policy initiatives that seized many of Mr. Medvedev’s campaign themes and echoed his presidential addresses over the past eight years.

“Great and grandiose tasks lie before us,” Mr. Putin said, addressing a legislature firmly under his control as Mr. Medvedev sat silently.

The proposals included efforts to reduce Russia’s double-digit inflation, new legislation to create tax breaks for education, housing, and medical costs, and more government spending for housing, infrastructure and military equipment.

Christian Democratic People’s Party in solidarity with Holodomor victims

The opposition Christian Democratic People’s Party in the Moldovan parliament has proposed a resolution commemorating and condemning the Holodomor. Its Romanian language version appears below. I am waiting for the translation which sooner or later will become available. The number of dead is presented as being at more than 7 million. It is noted, among other things, that “it was a method of mass destruction through starvation, practiced by the Bolshevik regime, which was attempting to destroy the peasantry as a basis of the Ukrainian people, the weakening of the capacity of resistance and of the willpower for liberty and state independence of the Ukrainians” (“a fost o metoda de nimicire in masa prin infometare, practicata de regimul bolsevic, care urmarea distrugerea taranimii ca temelie a poporului ucrainean, slabirea capacitatii de rezistenta si a vointei de libertate si independenta statala a ucrainenilor. ..”). I don’t expect the Communist majority in the Moldovan parliament to accept it, but the gesture is praiseworthy nevertheless. This has happened in the past too. What I hopw would happen is for Ukrainians and Ukrainian-North Americans to observe who is supporting this resolution (the oppositiion) and who is opposing it (the Communists).
Ohryzko is starting to prop up the Moldovan Communists (again) and this is getting on my nerves. It is simply not Ukraine’s business to tell Romania that it should sign a basic treaty and a frontier treaty with Moldova (an idea promoted only by the Communists and the small Russophone parties). I also recall that one of the reasons why some people in Romania did not want Romania to sign a basic treaty with Ukraine in 1997 was because then Ukraine would tell Romania to do the same with Moldova. The basic treaty with Ukraine was, of course, a good idea, but this point of the critics has proven to be correct. Basescu’s reaction to Ohryzko’s requests has not been polite (for example, the former sailor Basescu compared it privately to how the Japanese shogun accepted a gift from Commondore Perry’s Americans and named it “the gift of the inferior toward the superior”), but he was 100% provoked. And I fail to see any gratitude whatsoever from official Kyiv for Romania’s going “the extra mile” for a MAP for Ukraine, except, perhaps, in the fact that Ohryzko was propping up the Moldovan Communists privately before the Bucharest summit and publicly only after the summit. Ohryzko was born on April 1, 1956 (see http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Volodymyr_ Ohryzko ) and his diplomacy in relation to Romania and Moldova is a joke.

I.A. Rus

Report on John Paul II sainthood ready

VATICAN CITY – The church official spearheading the cause to make Pope John Paul II a saint said Monday he has finished a roughly 2,000-page draft of a report supporting the late pontiff’s canonization.

 

Two days before the Vatican marks the third anniversary of John Paul’s death, Monsignor Slawomir Oder told Vatican Radio that he has turned over the report to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

 

The report summarizes and analyzes all the documentation about John Paul’s life and virtues that had been gathered since his 2005 death, including testimony from witnesses and his own writings.

“In the past days I have submitted a semifinal version,” Oder said. “It’s about 2,000 pages that need further technical and editing adjustments, but we can say that in its entirety, the report is complete.”

Now, an independent Vatican official, the Rev. Daniel Ols, must review Oder’s report and give it the final go-ahead for an official presentation to the Congregation, which must then gather committees of cardinals and bishops to discuss the merits of the case.

Oder declined to give a timetable for that, or say when the Vatican might decide to beatify John Paul.

The Vatican’s complicated saint-making procedures — which can include the weighing of favorable and unfavorable information — require that a miracle attributed to the candidate’s intercession be confirmed before beatification. A second miracle is necessary for canonization.

Pope Benedict XVI put John Paul on the fast track to possible sainthood just weeks after his death on April 2, 2005, waiving the customary five-year waiting period.

Such a waiver had only been granted once before, to Mother Teresa, who died in 1997 and was beatified in 2003.

John Paul’s sainthood process is progressing quickly, with milestones reached at nearly every anniversary of his death.

Last year, the investigation into John Paul’s life and virtues was officially closed, and French church officials turned over to the Vatican documentation about a purported miracle attributed to his intercession.

Benedict will preside over a Mass on Wednesday marking John Paul’s death.

 

THEOMACHY OF LENINISM

The topic “Lenin and Religion” has got various treatments, but each time its analysis was too narrow. Partially because of activities of Lenin himself, who called for fighting with religion as an ideology of the ruling classes that fuddled and enslaved common people; he believed it was necessary to change social conditions, publish antireligious literature and conduct antireligious propaganda. But real Lenin’s attitude to religion was not fully revealed in his criticism of religious ideology. Lenin’s fanatic atheism, his fierce struggle with religion cannot be brought down to struggle with social harm caused (according to Marxism) by erroneous, but historically conditioned form of ideology – religion. We should put it clearly: Lenin fought not against religion, but against God, whose existence he fiercely denied.

To touch the secret of Lenin’s attitude to religion it is necessary to remember a writer of genius Dostoevsky, who managed to reveal the teomachist intention in the European culture. As an artist Dostoevsky did not formulate his ideas in completed concepts, but in the “philosophy of images” he is extremely accurate. Dostoevsky fought against materialistic views of his opponents, though not regarding them proper materialists. Consciousness of atheists – the characters of his novels – is dual: they need God to deny Him.

Russian scarecrow

“The Moldovan Republic must be at good terms with Romania. We are neighbors. Romania won’t disppear from the map of the world and the Moldovan Republic will neither. As for myself, I am for good terms with the neighbors. We must forget about all the misunderstandings we had, some of them for historical reasons. ” So the Moldovan President Vladimir voronin is trying to get closer to the Romanian President Traian Basescu for fear of Vladimir Putin and out of his wish that the Moldovan Republic should enter NATO games.
Communist Voronin’s attitude to Romania seems to be undergoing a complete change, given his recent statement for NIT television, owned by his son Oleg, as the press in Chishinau reports. Senior Voronin put it explicitly that his words could be taken for a clue by Bucharest officials, according to the BBC-Romania.
Fear of NATO
During the NATO summit due in Bucharest in April, the head of Moldovan state is going to have one more meeting with the Romanian President. Voronin’s plans may also have something to do with Russia’s new strategy on Ukraine, Georgia and the Moldovan Republic. The leader of Moldovan Communists is turning for Bucharest at times when in the Moldovan Republic there is looming a huge political alliance headed by Serafin Urechean, a former mayor of Chishinau, now a president of “Our Moldova” Alliance, a threat for the present rulers in future elections.
Voronin may be trying to get President Basescu’s support, since Serafin Urechean reached an agreement with the National Liberal Party in Bucharest, through Calin Popescu Tariceanu, as well as with Constantin Kosacev, a leader of Vladimir Putin’s party United Russia.
“We are neighbors”
The BBC comments this is the first time in a year that President Voronin has mentioned the need to improve relations with Bucharest, harmed by much tension in 2007. Last year Chishinau officials fueled a constant campaign against Romania, even at European level. Therefore Voronin’s new appetite for good terms with the neighbors is quite surprising.
The vary same day the Moldovan President made this statement, the Flux daily, close to the People’s Christian-Democrat Party, published a report on the intensification of Kremlin’s alternative plans, allegedly looking for the making of a huge liberal party in the Moldovan Republic to be headed by Serafim Urechean. (…)
Victor RONCEA