We can all be thankful that Victor Yanukovych has finally managed to win a presidential election fairly. Yanukovych, of course, can thank the hordes of voters in the east and south who robotically vote time and again for his own best interests. But he can also thank all those voters who didn’t vote for his rival Yulia Tymoshenko. They helped him into power.
Let’s forget about the potential voters who didn’t even bother to turn up at the polling stations on Sunday. They abdicated their right to have any say in the matter, and have nothing to complain about if the wrong monkey got in. They had no influence on the final tally, as they didn’t even cast a vote to be counted.
But what can we say about those who did vote, but voted against both candidates? How did their vote (about 4.5 percent of the overall vote) affect the result? Why should Yanukovych be grateful to them?
Well, Ukraine was going to wake up to a new president-elect the morning after Feb. 7. The only question was whether that person would be Yanukovych or Tymoshenko. Refusing to vote for either of them is like kids who, while playing a game they suddenly realize they can’t win, start fuming: “It’s not fair! I’m not playing!”
But the game continued anyway. By not participating, those who didn’t vote for either candidate helped Yanukovych win. The final gap between him and Tymoshenko was less than the percentage of those who thought the best thing they could do to express their discontent was to go off in a huff.
That’s assuming, of course, that these people would have voted for Tymoshenko. But really, whom else, in all fairness, should they have voted for? Which of the two candidates in this year’s presidential election tried to rig the vote last time, and which one stood up and supported the people’s right to a fair vote?
Tymoshenko, for all her faults, hasn’t tried to steal an election yet. Ukraine is soon going to have a president who was found to have tried to steal the presidential election in 2004.
What contempt does that show for voters, for the people, for the nation, and for the idea of democracy? Or do you think, to mangle a metaphor, this monkey has changed his spots?
This person is not fit to be the president of Ukraine. Do you really think Tymoshenko would have been worse? Or do you think, perversely, that Ukraine has to go through a bout of political masochism via a Yanukovych presidency to somehow rouse the legions of voters who sleepwalk their way into the polling stations to vote for him every election time?
Wake up tactical voters! Even if you have to hold your nose when voting for a candidate you don’t particularly like, sometimes you just have to do it in order to stop the wrong monkey from getting in.
The comic tragedy of Adams’ anecdote is that the people are given no choice but to vote for monkeys. That’s Ukraine’s tragedy as well, and to be honest, the tragedy of a lot of the more established democracies as well.
We can only hope against hope that by the time of the next presidential election, a new species of politician will have evolved in Ukraine.
But meanwhile, thanks to those who didn’t vote for either candidate, we’ll all have to make do with the wrong monkey.
Euan MacDonald is a Kyiv business owner and an editor at Interfax-Ukraine News Agency. He can be reached at [email protected].
