There is even a provision in the law for up to 10 percent free space on billboards for social causes.

Unfortunately, as Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk noted in an article in this edition, President Viktor Yanukovych and the ruling Party of Regions are taking advantage of the law to erect holiday messages to Ukrainians.

It may be all well and good, but it’s clearly political and a waste of this worthy provision in the law. The billboards featuring Yanukovych’s face or the Party of Regions colors are so ubiquitous that vandals have even reacted by defacing them, which is inexcusable.

Apparently, Yanukovych likes to see more than his picture on the big boards. Alexander Motyl, a political science professor at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, recently blogged that the State Forest Resources Agency ordered 300 forestry divisions to buy Hr 15 million worth of presidential portraits and state emblems. “Hey, if it works in North Korea, why not in Yanukostan?” Motyl asked.

We think Yanukovych would look more presidential and serve the nation better if he would order all of his personal and party billboards to be replaced in the nation with those that call attention to solutions to some of Ukraine’s more dire social problems: smoking, drinking, HIV/AIDS, poverty, homelessness, orphans, domestic abuse, racial intolerance.

Or this space could be taken up by tourism messages from the state.

Attention to these social issues would be much more welcome than the cult of personality and party that Yanukovych and the Party of Regions are obviously trying to instill with these billboards, with counter-productive results.

These stiff billboards of Yanukovych’s mug come across as something more from the Leonid Brezhnev era of vanity. And the holiday messages seem insincere.

We’ll know the egos at the top are completely out of control when they start putting their faces on various denominations of the Ukrainian hryvnia. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.