There is no talk about fixing the pipe or even better covering up the pit, which we, the residents, have to navigate over shaky wooden planks. Svoboda seems uninterested in this issue of no national importance. For them, it’s just the humdrum of life.
Svoboda got an office in our building more than two years ago. Since then, the party has beaten its opponents a few times, got into parliament for the first time and chopped down fences. None of it, however, reflected in any way on the environment they inhabit.
The hallway of our building has remained dark and quite dirty, despite the best efforts of its caretakers. The lock on the door to the hallway remains broken. The archway that leads to the building inevitably turns pitch dark in the evening, with silhouettes of smoking Svoboda activists lurking in its depth. Even after the memorable snowfall last winter I saw no trace of these brave fellows with spades in our yard.
The only regular activity that I have really noticed is the carrying in and out of the office of flags and banners, and singing of patriotic songs.
This makes it really difficult for me to understand what this party has to offer me as a voter, when they are totally uninterested in the surrounding mess, and only care for the abstract “spirituality.” From my philistine point of view this is what their pitch looks like:
– People, vote for us!
– Why?
– Because we’re great!
– What’s so great about you?
– We can carry flags around.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not calling for Svoboda to retrain to be street sweepers (although, maybe, considering the number of rough guys in its ranks, this would not be a bad idea). Nor am I trying to take responsibility off myself and the rest of the residents for the state of the building we live in. However, I do think that any person or group do affect the environment they inhabit.
Being a popular movement, and even an influential parliamentary party as of last year, Svoboda, unlike the rest of the residents, claims that it’s capable of changing the life of the whole nation for the better. However, during the years of our co-habitation I have not seen any changes in our common environment that would allow me to believe in their ability to implement much more complex plans.
This December, Ukraine will have a by-election to parliament in five constituencies. My own constituency number 223 will have Svoboda member Yuriy Levchenko running for parliament, just like last year.
Even through he is young and seems intelligent, and studied in London and Magdeburg, once again I will not support him. It’s not just about the busted light bulbs, though.
His own election program says he will fight with “propaganda of sexual perversions. (This is a bit of a strange priority for a 29-year-old man. Do they really teach them this kind of things in London?) But, unlike the light bulbs, those perversions don’t bother me even a bit.
What I am bothered with is a possible implementation of his party’s program. It promises, among other things, to ban abortions (which in Ukraine will mean the opening of a flourishing market of criminal abortions in the best traditions of the Stalin era, which is much easier than design a proper prevention program), and ban adoption of Ukrainian children by foreigners (I just wonder how many orphans have been adopted by the deputies of Svoboda).
These must be the most urgent problems in the nation, which takes the 78th spot out of 187 in the UN Human Development Index.
The anti-semitic statements and homophobic actions of Svoboda, covered by both Ukrainian and international press, must also be designed to raise this political force to the new heights of spirituality.
Levchenko’s alleged victory in the same constituency was impossible to establish because of multiple violations that occurred during the vote count last October. This time he once again will be a single candidate from three oppositional forces, including Batkivshchyna and Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform. This calls for a number of questions to Svoboda’s partners.
Are they really unable to suggest a candidate capable of offering their voters not only an opposition label, but an adequate program of actions, and with no tail of controversy?
The opposition, of course, is not the only problem. A few days ago, Svoboda’s’ opponents also came to our yard with a protest. They shouted some slogans and spray-painted the adjacent building with swastikas.
Actually, they would have been better off concreting the pits in the yard. It would at least add some sense to their actions in the eyes of the local residents. Otherwise, it’s the same old stuff, camouflaged as the fight for spirituality.
Anya Tsukanova is a Kyiv journalist currently on maternity leave.
