It’s on the tip of the tongue of every newcomer who’s entered Kyiv in the last three weeks: Why in Heaven’s name does virtually every store in Kyiv have a poster of Alfred E. Newman plastered up on its entryway? Has that handsome devil Newman, his popularity all but dead back home in the States, got a new commission going in a country that for years refused to tolerate him? Or is it just another blatant example of copyright piracy? Newcomers, fear not. Newman has made no comebacks in the former USSR, and no trademarks have been illegally appropriated. In fact, the mug smiling out from those posters is not Newman at all, but the present Р and most likely future Р president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma. Why, you ask, is a poster of the president adorning virtually every storefront in this supposedly democratic country? The answer is simple: Ukraine has not quite mastered the intricacies of being a democratic country. And the president has more than a little to do with that, as his slam-bang poster campaign indicates. If you donХt believe us believe the OSCE. In a report issued this week, the OSCE slammed the authorities for allowing such commando electioneering tactics to proceed. KuchmaХs poster campaign reeks of Soviet tactics. Just compare his posters to the old Communist Party slogans Р still visible from time to time around Kyiv Р that urged the people to be good Soviet citizens, work hard and support the struggle for Communism. In the USSR, such slogans were everywhere, and if you leave the capital, you will see that many of them are still around. They are all hopelessly weighed down by ideological language and have always been dismissed by the entire population as utterly unrepresentative of reality. Now look at some of KuchmaХs slogans: ТFive years of stability;У ТBuy Ukrainian;У ТIt will all be good.У First of all, the slogan, ТFive years of stabilityУ could just as easily have read, ТFive years of steadiness,У as in ТFive years of steady economic decline.У The ТBuy UkrainianУ poster, especially when hanging in boutiques of expensive imported goods, offers a critique of itself. And, does anyone think that it will Тall be goodУ if he gets re-elected? Why wasnХt last year, or the year before, all good? Certainly few Ukrainians buy that one, as has been proven by numerous interviews conducted by the Post and other publications with average citizens throughout the country. So, what we have here are a bunch of empty, ideologically false posters blanketing the capital. Nobody believes them and they are far too widespread to represent only the demographic that supports Kuchma. Rather, it is clearly a Kuchma-sponsored (read: state-sponsored) action, just as the Soviet authorities not too long ago covered the city with their propaganda. And, like the old Soviet posters, KuchmaХs campaign posters are so ubiquitous that by now we have grown used to them Р even though they first appeared only a couple weeks ago. In honor of the incumbentХs latest and most visible return to old Soviet propaganda practices, the Post would hereby like to honor the president with the very special, Election Х99 Best of Kyiv award. Good job at refreshing Ukrainian citizensХ memories of undemocratic Soviet traditions, Mr. President. YouХre sure to make Boris Yeltsin, who did about the same thing during the 1996 election in Russia, proud.
