The biggest achievement perhaps is to more starkly reveal the greed and moral bankruptcy of many who hold positions of leadership.
This newspaper, by the policy of the publisher and longstanding tradition as we enter our 19th year, will never be a partisan or opposition newspaper. To support one political force or another cheapens independent journalism. Regrettably, many Ukrainian journalists are forced into choosing sides and consequently fail to fairly report both sides. Some wear three hats at once – opposition politician, social activist and journalist. We just want to stick to good journalism at the Kyiv Post.
That said, we by far see the greatest threat to democracy and Ukraine’s economic prosperity coming from Yanukovych and his supporters, including the ruling Party of Regions and most oligarchs.
We still hope that thoughtful reason prevails at the top because the nation faces its biggest crisis since the 2004 Orange Revolution. Today’s troubles may yet eclipse that courageous effort to overturn a rigged presidential election that would have put Yanukovych in power then.
The Party of Regions on Jan. 16 rammed through, without public notice or debate, a raft of draconian laws that drop any pretense of transforming Ukraine into a European-style democracy. If Yanukovych signs these laws, Ukraine will regress back to the dark ages of authoritarianism, indistinguishable from most former Soviet republics where dictatorships flourish. One of them criminalizes libel, but there are many other dangerous measures. See coverage on page 3 and Katya Gorchinskaya’s op-ed on page 5.
Before these laws were passed, the government or its agents were already well under way with a campaign to harass, attack or jail opposition activists and independent journalists as well as to put the news media into pro-government hands and squeeze out the remaining independent news outlets. The Ministry of Culture threatened religious freedom through a bullying letter to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, part of an attempt to re-establish the Kremlin-backed Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchy as the dominant church in Ukraine.
In response to threatened sanctions from the West, those aligned with the power structure – such as millionaire businessman Viktor Medvedchuk – publicly floated the possibility of returning Ukraine to a more isolated past by re-imposing visas on Westerners and having nongovernmental organizations with Western funding registered as foreign agents, pages from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s playbook.
Then there remains the perversion of the nation’s courts, prosecutors and police, who behave as a state-funded private security service to protect those in power from harm or legal responsibility for ill-gotten financial wealth or violent crimes.
The behavior of this judicial system is reprehensible, starting with unidentifiable police officers who wear masks but not name tags to evade personal responsibility. In the investigative phases, the immorality furthermore continues with blatant smear campaigns against the victims of crime. Investigators suggested, for instance, that the beaten journalist and opposition activist Tetyana Chornovol may have suffered her injuries on Dec. 25 in a road accident. They suggested that ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko may have been a drunken aggressor during the Jan. 10 rally in which police beat him and drew blood.
Orwellian logic prevails: Police had a right to crack down on demonstrators that night because protesters were blocking a police van carrying three convicted terrorists. The reality is that the demonstrators were protesting a kangaroo-court verdict against three men convicted of trying to destroy a non-existent statue of Vladimir Lenin. Trial by jury is still non-existent in this nation and rulings are made to order.
The outrages have put Yanukovych in danger of losing re-election. However, it is entirely possible for Yanukovych to win an honest election next year. Weaknesses and internal strife among the political opposition are the main reasons, as well as the sidelining of the president’s main rivals. With ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in jail, the president’s supporters are threatening to keep popular opposition leader Vitali Klitschko off the ballot with a new law that bans eligibility for anyone with foreign tax residency, as Klitschko has in Germany.
Opposition leaders have their work cut out for them to rally the public, persuade oligarchs to back them, win support from abroad and get elected. As for those in power, let’s hope they have an epiphany. Perhaps the real blessing of EuroMaidan is that the two months of protests have exposed weaknesses all around – in society, among those in power and those seeking to gain power. If all learn the right lessons, hope remains for Ukraine, however fragile this hope appears at the moment.
