Political scientists warn against loss of Ukraine's statehood due to mass protest rallies
Activists shout during a rally in front of city hall in central Kiev, Ukraine, Thursday, Mar.26. About 2,000 angry protesters protested against price increases and other policies of Kiev mayor as discontent grows amid a worsening financial crisis AP

Political scientists warn against loss of Ukraine's statehood due to mass protest rallies

Mar 27, 2009 at 11:29 | Interfax-Ukraine
The extreme politicization of protest rallies may translate into the loss of Ukraine's statehood, Ukrainian political scientists have warned.

The opinion was expressed by Director of the Situations Simulating Agency Viltaiy Bala at a press conference in Kyiv on Thursday.

"The main idea of staging protest rallies organized by the Regions Parties on a large scale lately is unleashing war, and nothing more. In that case, I'd like to advise that our politicians should look up their history books again and remember how such incitements have ended," he said.

"Actually, these are illusions. If they believe they will be able then to lead those people whom they bring to streets, and somehow direct that entire energy in their favor [they are mistaken]. I think that energy, being built on people's negative emotions, will never bring those [who unleash it] to power, to what they're dreaming of. Moreover, such deeds amid the social and economic crisis in the country may result into the situation that we won't hear about such a state as Ukraine in a geographical sense very soon," Bala said.

Director for the Penta Applied Political Studies Center Volodymyr Fesenko said, in turn, that various protest rallies could take place against the backdrop of the crisis as the manifestation of dissatisfaction with some decisions in favor of certain interests. However, in this case "it is a matter of the over-politicization of protest rallies organized by the Regions Party."

Moreover, he stressed that many organizers of social protest rallies "deliberately deny that their actions are politicized and that they are associated with this or that political force."

"This is a deliberate, targeted political action, which, on the one hand, is a reaction (to Viktor Yanukovych's pledge to take people to streets after the Ukrainian government's 100-day period is over)," Fesenko said. On the other hand, all the calls by the Regions Party to freeze the Verkhovna Rada's work amid the social and economic crisis are nothing else as adhering to the "worse is better" principle, he said.

"Blocking [the parliament] is a deliberate aggravation of not only the political crisis, but also the social and economic one. If it goes on, then it may virtually translate into the collapse of the state amid the crisis. This is an issue of the responsibility of the powers that be. One should think not only about his or her entirely political interests, but also about the state in general," Fesenko said.

Taras Berezovets, the director of the Pollitech PR Group, in turn expressed the opinion that protest rallies are held in the regions "either without a local authoritt response to, or with the actual support of the presidential vertical line… of the regional administrations."

"Moreover, there is information that some local authorities even encourage such actions," he added.

"There is a great danger that as a result of such rallies, the outcome could be opposite to what the Regions Party expects - when the radical parties' actions will be triggered and strengthened. Such actions may lead to a situation when the authorities [lose] control," he said.

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