Dennis Hertel: “I am now able to report that our goals have been achieved. We will be completing 6 years of assistance to the Ukrainian…”

“I am now able to report that our goals have been achieved. We will be completing 6 years of assistance to the Ukrainian parliament. Our most lasting accomplishment has been to create and sustain for 5 years a robust internship in the parliament. Five years ago, few, if any new staffers, were hired by the Ukrainian parliament. There was no new blood, no fresh thinking at the staff level. Staff holdovers, appointed by the former communist leaders of the Soviet Union before Ukraine received its independence in 1991, remained in place and served as a retarding influence on any internal effort to modernize the parliament or to pass reform legislation. During the past 5 years, the intern program supported by this association has included more than 250 young Ukrainian university graduates, drawn especially from law schools or those departments specializing in economics politics and social issues. Interns have served not so much as interns as we know them in our Congress, but really as the staff of the parliament.”