LVIV, Ukraine – University students in western Ukraine continued to protest the appointment of Dmytro Tabachnyk as the country’s new education and science minister. They said they would not stop until they achieved their goal of forcing his resignation. Meanwhile, movements in support of the controversial minister sprouted in southern Ukraine, while a dedicated website started collecting signatures in his support on Feb. 19. Tabachnyk himself continued to downplay the protests, telling a Ukrainian newspaper they were “brazen political blackmail” and “politically engineered.”
With cries of “Down with Tabachnyk,” “East and West Together” and “Death to Our Enemies,” over 5,000 students in Lviv formed a human chain on March 23 that spanned across the city from two of its leading universities to the train station. Often bringing traffic to a halt, students passed hand-to-hand a large black book in which they “graded” the new minister. The so-called grade book was then taken by train to Ternopil by several students.
The book is expected to travel the country to various universities throughout the week. Protest organizers said it will then be presented to Tabachnyk sometime next week in Kyiv.
“It all depends on how many protests will take place in different cities,” said Andriy Ben, who heads the non-profit Youth Nationalist Congress.
Students said they joined the protest because they could not wait for politicians to decide Tabachnyk’s fate. Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, leader of the “For Ukraine” faction in parliament has introduced a resolution asking the legislature to dismiss Tabachnyk. That vote could take place on March 30.
“We’re hoping pressure will grow on him every day,” said Yulia Pavlyk, 19. “Everyone needs to unite. We just can’t sit and wait for him to leave.”
“The new minister is against Ukraine and the Ukrainian nation,” said 20-year-old Oleksandra Moyshuk in explaining her participation on a hot spring day. “He doesn’t see us as a Ukrainian nation. He sees us as a Russian-Orthodox ethnos.”
Protests against Tabachnyk began immediately after his appointment on March 11. Most have been centered in western Ukraine, but smaller anti-Tabachnyk demonstrations have also taken place in central and southern Ukraine, and even Donetsk, the stronghold of the current power team.
The new minister has a long history of making anti-Ukrainian statements and has promised to make changes to the country’s educational system that his critics say will again open the door to corruption, which was endemic in the Soviet era during most of independence years. That includes downplaying the role of independent standardized tests. Those tests presently determine entrance into a university and students say they level the playing field, giving everyone an equal chance at getting an education. Officials in the new cabinet have said independent testing will be supplemented with university entrance exams.
Some Lviv educators privately said they suspect Tabachnyk’s desire to backpedal on progressive reforms stems from what they say is a personal feud that has gone on between him and his predecessor, Ivan Vakarchuk, for more than a decade.
Vakarchuk, the former rector of Lviv’s Ivan Franko National University, is credited with introducing many of those reforms. Educators, who wished to remain anonymous, said Tabachnyk would do everything in his power to ensure Vakarchuk was now kept out of the educational system. But Tabachnyk will now have to make a choice whether to put ill feelings aside. By a vote of 252-18, on March 25, the workers collective at Lviv’s Ivan Franko National University re-elected Vakarchuk as rector. They recommended the ministry Tabachnyk heads to confirm his election and sign a contract with him. Vakarchuk was the only candidate for the post of rector.
Tabachnyk appeared to lend some credence to that view when he accused Vakarchuk of corruption and dereliction of duty in an interview with the Kyiv-based Sevodnya newspaper that appeared on March 23.
“The entire truth is that a person who cynically destroyed education and broke the law, hated his colleagues, didn’t execute state plans and the budget, and didn’t distribute textbooks, humiliated teachers, called them corrupt, can be considered a Ukrainian minister, but a person who wants to help people who work in the sphere of education and be proud of their profession, but doesn’t pronounce ritual words about (Stepan) Bandera, is considered for some reason not a Ukrainian minister,” he said, referring to the controversial nationalist leader who headed the guerilla Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in the 1930’s-1940’s.
Meanwhile, former president Viktor Yushchenko said he had warned his successor, Viktor Yanukovych, against appointing Tabachnyk as minister.
“This is a minister who can only bring division in higher education and in Ukrainian education. This is a person who does not respect our roots, who despises them. I told the new president that,” Yushchenko told the Channel 5 TV on March 23. Some, however, believe the upside of the student protests and debate is that a civil society is taking root in Ukraine.
“The hope of this new government is that they can control the street,” said Myroslav Marynovych, vice-rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University, which has come out against Tabachnyk. “But people are showing that they have their civic position.”
Natalia A. Feduschak is the Kyiv Post’s correspondent in western Ukraine. She can be reached at [email protected].
