For a week the road next to Ukraine’s parliament has been blocked by protesters. When people took to the streets on Oct. 17, there was talk that this was the beginning of the “third Maidan” but it has turned out to be a dud. The protests are now waning, the tent camp is almost empty, Russian propaganda channels were able to seize on these events to portray, again, Ukraine as a country in constant turmoil, the reality is that from day one this was a dangerous gamble by a convenient and temporary coalition of populists.
The demands of the protesters were reasonable, so reasonable in fact that all three points are already part of the national debate in Ukraine.
Demand one – end parliamentary immunity
Ukraine is not unique in having laws preventing the prosecution of members of parliament, similar laws exist in both the UK and the US too. As usual though Ukrainian parliamentarians abuse this fringe perk of their mandates and in reality they perceive this to be a, literal, Get Out Of Jail Free card. In a country as corrupt as Ukraine, parliamentary immunity must be ended to end the mentality of those who create the laws and at the same time believe themselves to be above those laws. This debate, this demand, is anything but new.
Demand two – a new anti-corruption court should be created
This is a hotly debated topic, and has been for some months. Just over a month ago President Petro Poroshenko and former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry exchanged remarks on this topic at a summit in Kyiv, when Poroshenko claimed it would take “too long” for such a body to be created (note, you’ve had three years already). Secretary Kerry replied that in the United States, every court is an anti-corruption court. Poroshenko has done a U-turn on his previous position, signaling a green light for a special anti-corruption court since then. That this would then be one of the pillars that this wave of protest apparently stands on is strange, to say the least.
Demand three – a change in electoral laws
I visited the protest camp on four occasions, and not once did I see or hear this demand being elaborated on. No specific changes to Ukraine’s election law were being proposed, no details of what kind of electoral system the protest leaders favored were offered. There already has been significant legislative changes to the way elections are run in Ukraine, most notably the Law On Financing of Political Parties, which was ground-breaking legislation, passed in December 2015.
No Third Maidan
The atmosphere in the protest area has ebbed and flowed over the last six days. When it began, various observers estimated the crowd numbers at between 5,000 and 10,000 people. The lower end of that range is probably closest to the truth. On that day many groups of people were seen to be taking part in the protest, without doubt some were paid, we can deduce this from the fact that ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko had been one of those calling for this protest, and, simply put, she doesn’t know any other way. It is unlikely that the group of animal rights protesters, called to march at the same time on the same day and in more of less the same place, were paid. But lumping differing groups together to swell numbers is also not an uncommon tactic in the arranging of pop-up protests in Kyiv.
Both Tymoshenko and the other senior figure in these protests, former President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvilli, are populists. It’s important not to conflate the words populists and popular. These two politicians are skilled at delivering undeliverable promises and using the toil of others for self-promotion. The most dangerous element to this populist gamble was the significant involvement of veterans of the conflict in Ukraine’s east. Tymoshenko and Saakashvilli played on the legitimate and less-legitimate grievances that this group has, manipulated these people, and thoughtlessly created a tinder box atmosphere where war veterans could have clashed with law enforcement officers. We have seen this happen before, with tragic consequences, in exactly the same place. To deliberately recreate that same environment is nothing short of disgraceful.
When tents were erected on the street outside parliament, the intention was to make it look like a real revolution was under way, but real revolutions start after a population boils over with anger, they require a long gestation period and they require a spark to light the fuse, those elements were missing for this protest. It was simply planned, connived, started at some randomly chosen date, and has now waned.
On Oct. 18, police were limiting supplies into the area controlled by the protesters, as tents and sleeping bags were thrown over the heads of the police officers and national guardsmen policing the perimeter of this area the crowd, then no more than a few hundred people, cheered. On Oct. 19 protesters started to make some noise on both sides of the security cordon. At this point anything could have set off a deadly chain of events. What probably averted a tragedy now is that many of the veterans on the protest side recognized many of their front-line comrades among those tasked with keeping the peace.
Ukraine’s armed forces veterans deserve respect. Not only have they fought to defend their country from Russia’s unprovoked aggression, but they have done so in the most difficult of conditions. The fighting in Ukraine’s east is trench warfare, the living conditions endured by the soldiers on the front line have been grim, the rations they have to survive on have been of the lowest quality, these men and women endured all of this to stop Russia’s advance into Ukrainian territory, and they put their lives on the line in the service of their country. They should not be exploited to assist the egos, the thirst for power, or the selfishness of populists and carpet baggers.
Today the protests are more muted, last night Saakashvilli announced that the action will continue until November 7th, which seems pretty pointless. The police and national guard have dialed down their operation, although they’re still present in large numbers, and appear to have done a deal to allow supplies to be brought into the camp. The people there have every right to protest peacefully, and maybe this brief episode has served a wakeup call to some inside of the building they are next to.
The tension is gone, that tension had been manufactured in the first place. It is very fortunate that this populist gamble didn’t end in tragedy, the people who engineered the situation made several key mistakes and miscalculations, hopefully their reputations will suffer as a result.
