Yushchenko abolishes traffic police

With their voracious appetites for bribes and backhanders, traffic policemen are regarded as the scourge of the former Soviet Union but Ukraine's President has a solution: legislate them out of existence.

President Viktor Yushchenko has abolished Ukraine's state traffic police at the stroke of a pen.

"If the traffic police continue to keep hiding in the bushes with speed cameras and do nothing else, there will be no traffic police," he told a meeting of law enforcement chiefs. "You have discredited this agency. That is why I have taken the decision that from today there will be no traffic police."

Ukrainians should not celebrate too soon. The discredited officers will soon be replaced with a new state patrol service.