Gennady Moskal: “Party of Regions officially acknowledged that they cheat their voters”

Deputy Gennady Moskal said that the Party of Regions has officially acknowledged that the regional councils had no right to adopt decisions on granting Russian the status of regional language and that such decisions are nothing but "window dressing" for voters. "Today, with great interest I read the response of acting head of the Transcarpathian Regional Council Volodymyr Zakurenyy on my deputy appeal, in which I requested to convene a session and recognize Hungarian as regional language in Transcarpathia (Hungarians comprise much more than 10 percent of the population in the region) – said Gennady Moskal. – Mr. Zakurenyy black and white wrote: "Neither law on local government, nor the law on the principles of state language policy, nor any other applicable legal act envisages for Regional Council such power as granting a certain language status of regional one, which in turn does not entitle the Transcarpathian Regional Council to consider granting Hungarian status of regional language and guarantee its use in the management and documentation." The situation is even more peculiar considering that Volodymyr Zakurenyy is not just acting head of the Council, but a prominent figure in the Party of Regions and even the head of its campaign headquarters in Transcarpathia."

According to the deputy, based on the responses to his request from an official representative of the Party of Regions, the decisions of Odesa, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Luhansk regional councils to give Russian the status of regional language is illegal and must be revoked.   

"Zakurenyy told me nothing new – I had already known that under the Kivalov-Kolesnychenko law regional councils had no right to pass such decisions – said the deputy and added that Zakurenyy should have organized a seminar on the application of the language law for the rest of the heads of regional councils. – My requests in different languages ​​were of purely provocative nature and knowing the inadequacy and stupidity of the Transcarpathian Regional Council officials, for some reason I was sure that they would react exactly as they did. If they had at least a bit of brain, they would adopt a neutral decision and recommend village, town and city councils, predominantly inhabited by Hungarians, Romanians, Poles, Germans, Roma, to resolve this issue at extraordinary sessions."

Mr. Moskal said that today minorities begin to see the true purpose of the Party of Regions. "Because member of village, town and city councils, densely populated by minorities, can not but to apply the law, while regional and district councils are putting pressure on him not to do so – he said. – I understand the laws, but try to explain to ordinary Hungarian or Romanian, why what is allowed to Russians is not allowed to them."

Gennady Moskal also stated that he appealed to law enforcement authorities to ensure the safety of Mr. Zakurenyy because under the criminal rules of the Party of Regions he "shopped" them all. "Frankly, after he had told the biggest secret of the Party of Regions, which is that no one was going to give any status to Russian and other languages and all their decisions are only pre-election populism, I began to worry about his health and life" – summed up Mr. Moskal.