“The Political System of Ukraine. Coat of Arms”
1. On the 24th of August, 1991 Ukraine became an independent state. On the 1st of December, 1991 the everlasting dream of the Ukrainian people came true.
2. 90% of the people voted for the independence of Ukraine and since that time the Ukrainian people had become the masters of their own destiny.
3. Nowadays Ukraine is a democratic state, ruled by the law and created as a implementation of the people’s sovereign right to self-determination.
4. The Ukrainian political system has a popularly elected President, a 450-person single-chamber national Parliament — the Verkhovna Rada.
5. The President is the highest official of the Ukrainian state, vested with supreme executive authority. He exercises it through the Government, the Cabinet of Ministers which is accountable to him, and through a system of central and local organs of state executive authority.
6. The Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine is the sole legislative authority. Judicial power in Ukraine is vested in the courts of law. The courts are independent and all their activities abide only by the rules of law.
7. A Prime Minister is nominated by the President and is a subject to approvalby the Verkhovna Rada.
8. The first President of Ukraine became Leonid Kravchuk, winning 61.6 percent of the votes. The nation supported Leonid Kravchuk’s programme aimed at the construction of a New Ukraine, where generations would combine efforts in asserting a strong state system, genuine democracy, material wellbeing, elevated spiritual awareness.
9. In 1994 Ukrainian people elected a new President, Leonid Kuchma. Ukraine has entered a new phase in its development. Though Ukraine has a wealth of political parties, ranging from unreconstructed communities to farright nationalities, personal and regional loyalties tend to play larger role in the Ukrainian political life than programmatic parties. A key challenge facing Ukraine is the establishment of effective, democratic governing institutions that strike a balance between executive and legislative authority.
10. Ukraine is divided into 24 regions and the Autonomic Republic Crimea, each of which has elected council, whose Chairman, elected at large, also serves as head of the executive branch. The cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol are subordinated directly to the central government. So we can say that state power in Ukraine is based on the division of authority into legislative, executive and judicial.
11. Ukraine not only strives to live in peace with the rest of the world community, but also to cooperate with other countries and participate in the European and world structures. It is already a member of numerous international political and economic associations and a founding member of the United Nations.
12. The national emblems — the coat of arms, the flag, and the seal— alternated dining the millenniumof Ukrainian history owing to various political, social, cultural, and other factors — a phenomenon common to many European nations.
13. The contemporarynational coat of arms of Ukraine, Azure, a trident or, is the mostancient as well as the most dignified of all the Ukrainian insignia of nationwide significance and its emblazonment represents a synthesis of a preheraldic device of the ruling dynasty in the tenth century and of the oldest Ukrainian national heraldictinctures from the thirteenth century. The classic form of the Ukrainian trident is found on the gold and silver coins of Volodymyr (Vladimir) the Great (979—1015), the Grand Prince of Kyiv.
14. The problems of the origin and of the original meaning of the Ukrainian trident have still not been solved by scholars. The archeological finds of tridents in Ukraine go back to the first century A.D. Undoubtedly this emblem was a mark of authority and a mystic symbol of one or several of the ethnic groups which inhabited ancient Ukrainian territory and which came to compose the Ukrainian nation.
Notes to the text:
1. the masters of their own destiny ['destini] — ãîñïîäàð³ ñâ âëàñíî¿ äîë³
2. to nominate ['nomineit] — âèñóâàòè, ïðîïîíóâàòè êàíäèäàòà, íàçíà÷àòè
(íà ïîñàäó)
3. coat of arms [a:mz] — ãåðá
4. emblazonment [im'bleizәnmәnt] — ðîçïèñ (ãåðáà)
5. dynasty ['dinәsti] — äèíàñò³ÿ