Oleh Tiahnybok Addresses Ukrainian Clergy With Request to Call Ukrainians Not to Sell Votes
On October 20, the head of the All-Ukrainian Association Svoboda, Oleh Tiahnybok sent an open letter to the clergy of the Ukrainian churches with a request to call the Ukrainians at Divine Services next Sunday not to sell their votes
during the elections on October 31 but to vote according to the call of their human conscience and honor.
Here is the text of the address published by the press service of Svoboda:
Highly Dignified Heads of Churches, Right Reverend Bishops and Fathers!
Ukraine today is again in a deep Ruin and each honest vote in the elections is invaluable for our long-suffering land as never before. For it is clear to everyone that the ancient values of the Ukrainian nation fostered and defended by many generations of Ukrainians for centuries such as the language, culture, and spirituality are being destroyed. At the same time, Ukrainians are exhausted by numerous social misfortunes such as unemployment, constant poverty, unaffordable treatment, lack of good, warm accommodation. Therefore, sometimes, to a great joy of the “recruiters of human souls,” the traders of people’s votes, they are prepared to welcome even small sops such as a kilo of buckwheat or the 80 or 100 UAH thrown to them for the sold electoral vote. By committing what seems as only a minor sin, by selling his or her vote a person is not simply joining a low and absolutely valueless “business,” but is selling something much greater. Selling something that actually is measureless and priceless.
They are selling the memory of the forefathers who were part of the insurgent army and perished in the struggle where forces were not equal, the memory of the strong people who were left to rot alive in jails, deported to Siberia but who did not betray their beliefs and did not betray us, their descendants.
They are selling the future of their children, who, thanks to a minor sop of the “recruiter,” which by the way makes no difference for the family budget, will probably have no more chance to have a fitting and wealthy life but will have to live in a country of a bunch of rich oligarchs who have entrenched themselves there on one hand and Ukrainians turned into farm laborers, on the other hand.
By selling their votes they sell the purity of their souls as they let Evil in. Evil that which will get rooted, sprout, blossom, and then will kill them. For a person selling his or her vote today will sell something else tomorrow. And, who knows, maybe, it was these businesslike “smart alecks” that subsequently became were-animals in the human shape and, “for the sake of thirty silver coins of Judas,” confiscated the last pieces of bread from houses during the Holodomor or brought NKVD officers to the dugouts of the soldiers of the insurgent army, thereby handing over to a terrible death their young fellow villagers.
The Ukrainian Church has always been a protector and preserver of spirituality, a holy temple, where everything Ukrainian sought shelter. Therefore, I hereby address You, the conscience and soul of the Ukrainian nation, with a request to call Ukrainians at the divine services next Sunday not to sell their vote but to vote according to the call of their human conscience and honor.
