Editorials
Friday, November 21, 1997ENCOURAGING progress has been made in improving the Hawaii State Hospital, but there still is a way to go. Federal Judge David Ezra told state Health Department officials he is pleased that the hospital has won full accreditation from the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Health-care Organizations, but the state has not fulfilled all its commitments under a consent decree signed with the Department of Justice six years ago. The judge gave the state until Dec. 15 to finish the job. State Hospital needs more improvement
Justice Department investigators have expressed concern that excessive overtime for hospital staff might result in stress and patient abuse. But as state Health Director Lawrence Miike pointed out, every step the department has taken to reduce staff overtime has been resisted by the staff union and affected employees.
The health director admitted that his department could have done better in some of the other problem areas cited by the Justice Department, such as discharge planning, treatment planning and lack of a psychosocial rehabilitation director. He said the Health Department is responding to the criticism. Judge Ezra made it clear it had better or he will take stern measures.
The state has built a new hospital to provide for persons with mental illness that is a vast improvement over the wretched facilities of the past and was essential for winning accreditation. The program has come a long way in other respects as well. Credit is due to this and the previous state administration for bringing the hospital up to standard in many respects.
However, it is disturbing to learn of the health director's frustration in dealing with the overtime problem as a result of union resistance. This sort of thing reflects badly on all public employee unions.
IF all goes well, Saddam Hussein will keep his word and let the United Nations arms inspectors - including the Americans - go back to work and the latest post-Gulf War crisis will be defused. The threatened military response by U.S. and possibly other forces will be averted. Easing of Iraqi crisis
Saddam has retreated from his insistence that American inspectors be barred from the U.N. teams, and from the later demand that other nations be given more prominent places in the inspection program. The United Nations found such conditions unacceptable, and they certainly were. The U.N. could not permit Iraq to dictate the composition of the inspection teams. The next demand would have been to decide what inspectors could and could not inspect.
The key appears to be a pledge by Russia to seek agreement in the Security Council to end the sanctions imposed on Iraq at the end of the Gulf War. This could be nothing more than face-saving for Saddam as he backs away from another military confrontation. The Clinton administration is adamant that the sanctions will remain in place. U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson declared, "We are not ready to lift sanctions until all Security Council resolutions are complied with by Iraq and if necessary will use our veto to achieve that objective."
The apparent resolution of the crisis was flattering to the Russians, who have been trying to recapture their role as a diplomatic player in the Middle East and to restore relations with Iraq, their former ally, since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even though the U.N. made no commitment to lift the sanctions, the Kremlin can be expected to lobby in the Security Council toward that goal.
As he has periodically since the end of the war, Saddam has been testing the resolve of the allies to keep him in check. He seems to have decided that the will to enforce the sanctions still exists, although weakened. But will it exist next year? Five years from now? Saddam will surely try to find out as long as he remains in power in Baghdad.
SCANDALS in the new Russia are taking on a familiar pattern. A high Kremlin official recently resigned in disgrace after a newspaper published photographs of him prancing about in a Moscow brothel. Now one of President Boris Yeltsin's top aides has been stripped of some of his powers after being embroiled in a book-publishing fiasco with which Newt Gingrich can easily identify. Fortunately, Russia's transition to market reform continues on a steady course despite these distractions. Russian book scandal
Top reformer Anatoly Chubais had survived skirmishes in the past and was Yeltsin's point man in the struggle for privatization, as one of two first deputy prime ministers and head of the ministry of finance. Yeltsin stood solidly behind him as Chubais made enemies by selling off state-owned industries.
Chubais' undoing was accepting, along with four other officials, $90,000 each in advances for a book about privatization. The advances were paid by a publishing company partly owned by an affiliate of Oneximbank, one of Russia's largest banks and a winner of recent privatization auctions. Chubais' detractors called it a thinly disguised bribe.
The Communists, the biggest group in the Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, refused to even discuss approving Russia's budget for next year as long as Chubais remained in place. Faced with a rejection of the budget, Yeltsin forced all his deputy prime ministers to relinquish their ministry positions. Senior lawmakers in turn agreed to take up the budget.
Although Chubais was bruised, the scandal did not seriously damage a Kremlin determined to move ahead toward a market economy. That stability is reassuring in face of the daunting economic problems that continue to plague Russia.
Rupert E. Phillips, CEO
John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher
David Shapiro, Managing Editor
Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor
Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors
A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor
