While the
European Union continues to wrestle with its economic turmoil, U.S. President
Barack Obama has successfully turned back the reactionary Republican Party’s attempt,
funded with billions of dollars from American oligarchs by way of the super PACs
(Political Action Committees). The reactionaries would have steered the United
States back into the ugliest corners of jungle economics and destroyed the social
achievements achieved since the era of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

This latest
American experience is an important indicator for Ukraine.

By official
count, the three opposition parties have won the proportional representation
party vote, by 50 percent to 30 percent for the Regions Party and 13 percent
for the Communist Party, with the remaining 7 percent not meeting the
thresholds.

It was
expected that the Regions Party would win big in the single-mandate vote and it
did so by taking 122 out of 225 seats by official count. The opposition
parties’ candidates and the independents took 59 and 44 seats, respectively. The
Communists did not get any. The other 225 seats were distributed by
proportional party representation.

Overall,
the Regions Party obtained 187 seats out of 450. The opposition parties took
187 seats combined.  Independents took 44
seats. The Communists received 32 seats.

A major
ploy of Yanukovych campaign was to plant and finance a contingent of their
party loyalists as independent candidates. How could this happen?

The most
plausible explanation is that, despite an agreement between the Batkivshchyna
and Klitschko’s Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform Party  to run only one candidate between them in
about 100 electoral districts, they competed against each other in too many
places. The outcome was remarkably poor for the UDAR Party, winning in only six
single-mandate districts — in comparison with 13 districts won by the Svoboda
Party.

Batkivshchyna
won 39 single-mandate seats, while smaller parties took two (one of them in the
opposition camp, the other with the Regions Party).

Important
as these numbers are, one might ponder a larger question: What should be the
strategic trajectory leading to better outcomes? That’s where the socioeconomic
issues come into play.

A winning
strategy for Ukraine requires getting rid of the oligarchic nemesis.  One can visualize a movement, a mindset —
not a new party — based on the best parts of liberal democracy and social
contract, perhaps modeled on modern Scandinavia and European international
cooperation.    

To have an honest
election, Ukraine needs a renewal and uplifting of its spirit on a scale comparable
with the Kozak uprisings for freedom in the 17th century, which
predated the French Revolution that raised the flag of liberty across borders.

To that
end, there is a need for a genuine and robust workers organizing drive by trade
unions, such as existing in the West, as an alternative to the parody of a
resurging Communist Party now capitalizing on social discontent in Ukraine.

The country
needs a massive resolve to right the wrongs and, in the process, to redeem the
honor of the nation now in the bondage of injustice manipulated by inscrutable
scoundrels.

It needs an
inspiring call to penetrate the ongoing funk and to demand justice and revenge
for the crimes of the ruling elite and, specifically, for what it has done to
the imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, former Interior Minister
Yuriy Lutsenko and others.

Nothing
less must be demanded not only for the chief architect of the new political
prison village in Ukraine but also for the well known masters of plunder of the
public property  and for corrupt
judiciary.

Ironically,
fitting lyrics and music for the occasion can be provided from international in
Ukrainian language: “Chuyesh, surmy zahraly ? Chas rozplaty nastav” (Do you
hear the sound of trumpets? The time of reckoning has arrived).

Without a
revival of its fighting spirit, the country is likely to continue floundering
in a sea of routine falsifications, cynicism, exploitation of its working
class, and the erosion of Ukrainian content.  

A populist democratic
agenda must avoid an overload of ideological or ethnic coloring, but it needs
to focus on dismantling the oligarchic conglomerates. It must stand mainly at
the center of social and political spectrum.

 Boris
Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.