Current Politics in Ukraine: Triumph of the cargo cult
Six years ago, I published an article under the (perhaps too optimistic) title “Farewell to the Cargo Cult” (Berliner Zeitung, 13 April 2007). It was about the ongoing protests in Kyiv organized by the Party of Regions against president Viktor Yushchenko’s decree dissolving the parliament and declaring early parliamentary elections. The decree was indeed controversial but probably it was the only way to stop the creeping coup d’etat: the buying up and blackmailing of deputies in the parliament to form a pro-Yanukovych constitutional majority.
The protests staged by Yanukovych’s supporters looked like a parody of the Orange Maidan — a dull, uninventive imitation of the revolutionary events that had occurred in Kyiv two years earlier. The pathetic turnout of the “protesters,” their passivity and lack of enthusiasm, inability to explain what they were fighting for and off-record confessions about banal remuneration received for the participation in that political show made a striking contrast to the powerful civic spirit revealed during the 2004 revolution.