What has not changed is the authoritarian rule of President Viktor Yanukovych and his ability to command a parliamentary majority on most matters of importance. For instance, he demonstrated it with the recent adoption of the law on referendum, which can enhance his prospects to stay indefinitely in power by manipulating the constitution via rigged referendum.
Years ago, a precocious 10-year old in my town, after catching radio news that Fidel Castro was re-elected the fifth time as Cuba’s president, offered his appraisal that Fidel must be doing a good job. That’s exactly the problem, replied his mother.
In the Eurasian landscape, it is not the 10-year old boy mentality that shapes politics, but rather the age-old tradition of autocracy, from Genghis Khan to Joseph Stalin, and the absence of a civil society with ethical values that could shape western-type libertarian perceptions of life and law.
Even if such innovations as free elections are brought in when dictatorships collapse one way or another, the nascent process becomes perverted in such a way that the goods somehow cancel each other out, and the old order returns under a new hat.
For instance, Viktor Yanukovych, despite of who he is and despite corruption and backsliding of democracy and human rights under his regime, received enough popular support to win two major elections in a row, albeit with irregularities last October. He should have been resoundly defeated if the majority of electorate were attuned to democratic notions of governance. Instead, other issues apparently took precedence, such as the pro-Russian sentiment in south- east. .
In most ex-Soviet republics, falling back into the old mold was almost automatic after brief proclamations of better thing to come. In Russia itself it took a few short years after the Soviet Union’s collapse to revert back from Boris Yeltsin’s heyday.
Ukraine managed to stay on a democratic pro-Western path, virtually synonymous with its national aspirations, and seemed to have made a decisive breakthrough with the Orange Revolution victory, until an appalling choice was made by the people of Ukraine in the 2010 presidential election — for which they can only blame themselves.
In that wide context, is there any impact in Ukraine from Svoboda Party’s sudden upsurge in parliamentary elections last October (other than the accusations and denials of anti-Semitism)?
Some observers, correctly emphasizing that the Yanukovych regime is debasing the remnants of Ukraine’s sovereignty as a nation, maintain that Svoboda Party came into the Verkhovna Rada to spark resistance in a civil war launched by the regime against the country’s Ukrainian identity. Never mind that a civil war with fist fights in the parliament gets only marginal results, and is much less making sense for any war in Ukraine, especially with questionable numerical and logistics base of the pugilists or a broad based commitment level.
By contrast, in retrospect the Orange Revolution had all bases covered. When Collin Powell, US Secretary of State was making his phone calls, something was going right.
This is not to denigrate patriotism and choices of Svoboda Party constituency and their stand with democratic opposition parties.
Ukrainians’ best chance of winning their country is under a democratic umbrella, given the ethnic diversity of its population – including those who are not quite sure or are indifferent who they are (the typical Malorossy).
Ukrainians do not and need not entertain the prospect of a civil war. They need to forge a majority that feels ashamed to be governed by a regime that jails political opposition leaders, selectively and falsely convicted for crimes they did not commit. Those who appreciate their own ethnicity, as well as those who are ethnically indifferent, need to understand primarily the difference between right and wrong.
Will this require a metamorphosis of a large part of Ukraine’s population?
If this angle is not anchored, Ukraine will continue its slide into the Eurasian pool.
Since the country is starkly divided, the goal seems elusive. Getting on the right track requires perseverance. Probably the best barometer of the continuity of democratic tenacity is commitment to freedom for the former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who inspired the Orange Revolution, and is the one most feared by the present regime.
That’s why additional charges are fabricated to destroy her stature.
Lukewarm support shown by the people for Tymoshenko during her kangaroo trial was nothing less than scandalous, and is an important indicator of where they stand in terms of understanding what’s right and wrong. It is a matter of elementary honesty, not contaminated by political choices or ethnic prejudice.
Tymoshenko’s detractors often finger to her shadowy dealings when she made her money buying and selling gas supplies, the kind of menu that made oligarchs rich. The slimy part of these charges is that people who make them invariably side with the Regions Party, the cesspool of oligarchs.
Ultimately Tymoshenko cast her lot for democracy and the people’s cause. An analogy that comes to mind is the patrician Franklin Roosevelt’s choice to reform America, bring it into the 20th century, and in the process save capitalism from itself. For that he was called traitor to his class.
Numbers are important. And until numbers for justice by far exceed the typical 35 percent range expressing opinion about Tymoshenko’s guilt or innocence, Ukraine will continue its slide.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
