Volatility
October 08, 2008 at 23:05 | Yuliya PopovaLVIV, Ukraine – Most of Ukraine’s 60-some palaces and castles are in the western part of the nation. And most are in various states of disrepair and dilapidation.
As such, they provide apt metaphors for the state of Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko’s political career. The pro-Western president isn’t doing so well these days in his own west, once a stronghold of his bedrock support.
How bad is it?
The performance of the Orange Revolution hero even has fresh university graduates pining for the good old days of ex-President Leonid Kuchma and ex-Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych.
“During Kuchma’s and Yanukovich’s time, prices were stable. Russia was not at our throat,” said Ihor Barvinkov. “Now it seems that we are living in a gas gulag because of Yuschenko’s Westernization efforts.”
The evidence is far more than anecdotal.
While western Ukraine supported Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine bloc in the 2006 parliamentary election, the presidential group slipped into second place behind the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko in the 2007 contest.
And last month’s poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology shows 40.4 percent of western Ukrainians would vote for Tymoshenko as president, while only 14.4 percent would back Yushchenko. The pro-presidential Our Ukraine forces would fare even worse in a parliamentary election, winning support from only 9.2 percent.
Yushchenko traveled to this chilling climate on Oct. 2, reminding foreign investors at the International Economic Forum in Lviv that 2008 is the year of castles.
It was hard to tell from his manner whether he knows he is no longer perceived as a knight in shining armor fighting off Eastern kings and signing treaties with Western legions. He looked confident and self-composed as if the skies were still clear.
He spoke of market dynamics, Euro 2012 soccer tournament prospects and unified energy systems, whatever that means.
In short, he asked for money.
“For 1,000 years, families of local counts were related to Western families,” Yushchenko said. “I know this is an ill time to talk about joining the EU (European Union). But we need more from our relationship now.”
“Ukraine needs a billion here and a billion there (dollars) – to build roads, to promote tourism, and for many other projects.”
During a coffee break, businessmen from world-famous companies spoke of mines, hotels and airports soon to take off in Ukraine. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the financial and crisis management giant, ran a commercial on big plasma screens with the logo “connected thinking.”
A floor down from the elegant conference hall in Lviv National University, three women working in a cloak room looked rather disconnected from the event upstairs.
They spoke of disappointment in their political leaders, especially in Yushchenko.
“We are paupers and they are aristocracy,” said Natalia Stetsko, 50, who started working in the university three years ago. “It will be long before we feel the effects of this meeting.”
Like her colleagues, she voted for Yushchenko and his party in three consecutive elections. But now she is not sure any more.
“He’s been scolding Yulia Tymoshenko for triggering inflation when she started paying people back their savings which devalued in the ‘90s. What about those thousands that they earn regularly, don’t they instigate the inflation?” Stetsko said, complaining of meager social benefits.
Passing designer label jackets to bankers, she said that she had just enough money for food, let alone new clothing.
The cloakroom women agreed that they would rather vote for students in this university than for Yushchenko again.
The head of the Lviv District Administration, Mykola Kmit, appointed by Yushchenko, sensed a storm rising among his residents. “We’ll only be able to say that we have succeeded when the pensioners say so,” Kmit said.
Eager to revamp his region in preparation to Euro 2012, he is positive that the president’s efforts will pay off soon.
“We need to move in the direction of the EU. Lublin and Zheshiv (Polish eastern regions bordering Ukraine) secured two billion dollars from the EU easily. We are fighting for a billion,” he said, trying to explain the reasons behind Yushchenko’s pro-Western agenda. Kmit is anticipating more workplaces and better salaries as a result of foreign investment.
People working the land in the village Bilyi Kamin, 75 kilometers from Lviv, could probably attest to Kmit’s plans. British agricultural business, Landkom International Plc, utilized fallow fields, brought new machinery and employed some 800 local farmers a year ago. “They’ve never seen modern tractors before. The fields were covered in weeds when we came,” said farming administrator, Kostyantyn Zolotukhin. Growing oilseed rape and wheat, he said, farmers get paid five times more than people in nearby villages.
He commended Yushchenko for lobbying foreign investment in Ukraine and relaxing visa rules. Nevertheless, Zolotukhin missed the parliamentary vote last year.
Back in the city, Barvinkov, 24, in his old Lada that is now a taxi, was seeing a seamy side of European integration. Grumbling at another pothole on the road, he said that he felt no changes since Yushchenko took office.
Graduating from Lviv Technical University with a degree in management, Barvinkov failed to find a permanent workplace. He said that earning $800 a month for driving around the city was more than a run-of-the-mill manager’s salary. Barvinkov regretted taking Yushchenko’s side during the Orange Revolution, a peaceful uprising in 2004 which swept the president to power.
At this snapshot in time, the president’s western castle seems to have turned into flat sand, attracting fewer visitors and even fewer admirers.