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William Miller |
The history-making 2004 elections in Ukraine will be the focus
of a special symposium at UGA on March 31. The panel of guest
speakers, all of whom were involved in the “Orange Revolution,”
will share their experiences and also discuss their perspectives
on the election’s meaning to Ukraine’s future.
“The Orange Revolution: Emerging Democratic Values in Ukraine”
will be held in Masters Hall of the Georgia Center for Continuing
Education from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. on March 31.
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Anatoliy Mavienko |
The symposium is being co-sponsored by the Carl Vinson Institute
of Government’s International Center for Democratic Governance,
the School of Public and International Affairs and the Center for
Humanities and Arts. Admission is free, and all are welcome.
Guest speakers will include William Green Miller, who was the United
States ambassador to Ukraine from 1993 to 1998 and presently is
a senior policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars. Miller spent six weeks in Ukraine during the Orange
Revolution and was an election observer for all three rounds of
Ukraine’s presidential election.
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Nadia McConnell |
Other speakers will be Anatoliy Matvienko, a member of the Ukrainian
Parliament who was part of the coalition supporting the Orange Revolution;
Nadia McConnell, president of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation; and Christina
Redko, coordinator of Znayu, a non-profit organization that provided
grassroots education on voter rights. A question-and-answer period
will follow the presentations.
Faculty members from the Vinson Institute and SPIA have been active
in Ukraine since 1994, when they provided a summer program on teaching
public administration for faculty members at Uzhgorod State University,
according to ICDG program director Dan Durning.
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Christina Redko |
“In the past decade, the Vinson Institute has hosted more
than 50 faculty members and practitioners from Ukraine and
sent more than 30 faculty members and local government practitioners
to work with partners there,” Durning says.
“Because of our close ties to friends and colleagues in Ukraine,
we were first scared about what would happen to the many people
who were risking their lives in nonviolent opposition to the stolen
election,” he also says. “We were thrilled with the
resulting honest election that re-established Ukraine as a functioning
democracy. We believe that the Orange Revolution was a turning point
in the history of Ukraine, with important implications for the world.”
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