It would be
done by attaching some amendments to the law, which he would then sign.
But first,
he would squeeze his pick of an intellectual elite into one room and get them
endorse some wording that would presumably prioritize the status of the
Ukrainian language and still be consistent with the law as approved on July 3.
As a
contrived consequence, the amended law would split the national democratic
opposition into those who are mollified by the amendments and those who aren’t.
Nice try.
But the plan misfired and was quickly abandoned, because it didn’t take long to
understand that such amendments could also drive many in the Regions Party and
in its electorate up the wall.
As for the
serious business, the language law as it stands now and signed by the president
after dropping the hanky-panky, may still help Yanukovych distract the
attention of opposition parties and activists from what matters the most — the
economy, the president’s Achilles heel.
In the year
2010 presidential runoff elections, 2 million fewer voters went to the polls
than in 2005. The bad economy during the 2010 runoff was the main cause for voter apathy that
resulted in the Orange loss.
It takes no
rocket science to figure that the key for the unified opposition to get a real
voting majority is to continue to be unified and to get back those 2 million into
the voting booth. A quid pro quo of sorts.
Hammer at
the present economic malaise, rather than get stuck on the tired right-of-
center economic freedom rhetoric or constitutional questions. Democratic values
alone will not hack it. The constitution gets less respect than a used Audi.
Voters will
be asking what is different between the Regions Party’s and the democratic
camp’s chances to deliver in the utilitarian department. Political persecution
under the Yaukovych regime doesn’t seem to be a red line in the eyes of most of
Ukraine’s citizens. This indifference to the abuse of power may be abhorrent for an outside observer, but the glossing over
is hardly surprising when much of the country is wishy-washy and devoid of a
national memory of the horrible genocide of the 1930s that was the Holodomor.
Decidedly, Yanukovych
must not be let to steal the show with his linguistic bravado that sparked enthusiastic
shows of approval in the Donbas and Odessa when he signed the new law.
The
existing language ecology in Ukraine is a legacy of the 300 years of Russia’s
domination. Important as language is, the top objective today is a political
regime change that would break up the ongoing march into a similar 300 year
roundtrip.
The Regions
Party may come up with more paste from the arsenal of distraction, some of them
with the help of paid advisers of the 2010 vintage.
One well-traveled
technique is based on packaging suspect
plans, such as foreign trade agreements with Russia or China with
preambles that are a far cry from small-print content. Fronted wording is then
used for campaign sound-bites in parts of the country where it can make a
difference. In Ukraine, for instance, a typical target could be Poltavska
Oblast, which Yanukovych lost by 5 percent in 2010.
It is this
kind of the Regions Party campaigning that can be troublesome for the
opposition.
One
structural limit of the opposition’s ability to convincingly articulate the
role of the Regions Party in the oligarchic dominance of the economy is the
absence of a credible outspoken radical anchor, such as the Socialist Party was
in the 2004 – 07 period. That party provided
margins for Orange Revolution victories at the polls, but then split after a
ghastly putdown of its leader Oleksandr Moroz by then-President Viktor Yushchenko, who had
no sense for useful coalition politics.
Ironically,
it is Yanukovych who is now adroitly floating a pre-election proposal to hike
taxes for wealthy elite.
Today’s
left in Ukraine is monopolized mostly by the Communist Party, which is
pro-Russian like the Regions Party. Both of them rely heavily not as much on
the Russian minority (part of which stands with the opposition, like the pro-democracy movement in Russia) as it
relies massively on ethnic Ukrainians of “the Malorossy” variety that have
hardly any use for the Ukrainian language, much less for any Ukrainian content
at state level.
Hopefully,
the cooler heads in the democratic camp can show a campaign strategy with a
winning economic agenda. Concentration of money and the resulting power imbalance
have made the task more difficult because they deformed the perceptions of
right and wrong among many, if not a majority, of the rank-and file citizenry.
And yet,
the country’s soul, to the extent that it matters, is defined by the depleted
ranks of
community-minded men and women at all levels of social standing who do
care about public interest. Some of them have talent to inspire many others.
That’s why Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuriy Lutsenko have been removed, under false
pretexts, from public forum. How long they will be in jail is a measure of
Ukraine’s reputation as a country.
To blame
only the government and absolve the people will not fly.
Boris Danik
is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
