There are no signs yet that Ukraine is about to choose rehabilitation.
One of the current trends is the presence of a cement bubble surrounding decision-makers. All four Ukrainian presidents have lived in bubbles. These bubbles are created by people around them to cushion harsh realities by filtering information so that the great leader does not get too upset about the sad realities.
It seems that the bubble around President Viktor Yanukovych is unbreakable. Dwindling numbers of people have access to him. A series of “public” events to mark the president’s three years in office showed just how bad things have gotten.
The shows, broadcast live, were staged and tightly controlled. He got plenty of flattery (which he clearly enjoyed) and very little reality in the form of tough questions or enlightening dialogue.
He’s not alone in this cement bubble. The few windows of communication that have existed between the government and public are shutting down.
For example, the public council at the Foreign Ministry is dominated by people with connections to God’s Embassy, a locally infamous charismatic church, and no experience in foreign relations.
With communication between the authorities and the people dwindling, government actions have been turned into formalities, such as the European integration process. The drafting of laws, the issuing of decrees and promises given during high-level meetings are nothing but empty rituals. What’s behind them is the hope that Europe will chicken out and sign the trade and political association agreement this fall in Vilnius, Lithuania, no matter what.
On the domestic front, it’s no different. Prime Minister Mykola Azarov boasts about reform in the social service, including the hiring of enough social workers to have a ratio of one per 3,000 people. However, a social worker in Kyiv will say that, while hundreds of people were hired late last year, none is trained. There are also not enough computers and even meeting space for a training session.
In one case, a journalist told a social worker about a woman in a village in Zhytomyr Oblast who raises a child on Hr 363 per month. The worker went to visit and reported that “no difficult circumstances were discovered” in that family. So much for reform.
Compartmentalization is common. It also goes by its name “doublethink,” coined by George Orwell. It’s the astounding ability to hold two mutually exclusive beliefs simultaneously, without seeing the contradiction.
It happens when the president signs up to an action plan for signing the association agreement with the European Union this November. And then, days later, a top opposition member and legal defender of the imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is thrown out of parliament by a kangaroo court. This is an example of pure doublethink.
When the president scolds his government for poor results in fighting corruption at the same time as his brand new private golf course is being finished in his Mezhyhirya estate north of Kyiv, that’s doublethink. He evidently does not think that the shady privatization of the estate and his lavish lifestyle are corruption.
The government reports improvements in the business climate and, in particular, customs clearance procedures. At the same time, importers in Odesa are bullied into using Euroterminal, an expensive private customs clearance point whose creation was blessed by the president. This is doublethink.
When Ukraine is seeking to host the Winter Olympics in 2020, and part of the infrastructure is to be built on private land that belongs to the man in charge of national projects, they see no conflict of interest.
There are also a lot of accidents in Ukrainian politics, even though Ukrainians like to see conspiracies all around them. They think everything is a plot by the Russian security services. In reality, most shortcomings are due to lack of planning, coincidence, arrogance or stupidity.
A good case in point is the opposition Batkivshchyna Party’s nomination of Vitali Klitschko, who heads his own opposition faction, for mayor of Kyiv earlier this month. The reason it happened is because one of the deputies who was present at a faction debate of the mayoral election accidentally concluded that Klitschko was to be supported before the debate was even finished. The news was tweeted and quickly picked up by the blogosphere and then mainstream news outlets.
Batkivchshyna had to either back off and admit the mistake or keep the poker face and pretend this was the plan all along. They chose the latter, of course, and spent the next week spinning elaborate theories to explain how the choice was made.
The number of accidental happenings in the country is very high. And the most unfortunate thing is that it’s a clear indication of the reactive nature of the nation’s governance. The problem is endemic for both the authorities and the opposition.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected]
