Hryts Speaks

By Walter Kish

Since Ukraine became independent, I have looked forward to every Ukrainian election with an interest equivalent to a preteen awaiting the release of the next Harry Potter book. Sad to say, the current election campaign has stirred within me little more than antipathy and frustration. Despite the fact that the electoral process in Ukraine has been reasonably fair the last few votes, I am mystified to no end by the motivations of the Ukrainian electorate who persist in returning the same motley crew to power who once in, proceed to abuse them and steal both their daughters and their last kopeks. While they collect dachas, Mercedes, and trophy wives with legs so long they stretch all the way to Crimea, the average Ivan and Ivanka count their stash of home-grown potatoes and pray that they last till the next summer’s crop. The current joke making the rounds of Ukraine asks the question: what do you call someone who has given up eating meat in Ukraine? The answer – a pensioner.

Striving to clarify the situation, I called my expert on all things Ukrainian, my cousin Hryts from the interestingly named selo of Pidkamin. As Ukraine now has the best cellular phone system in the world, and Hryts possesses several of Nokia’s best new models, I had no trouble reaching him as he sat in his garden counting the number of BMWs driving by his house, swerving to avoid potholes.

“Hrytsiu” I asked, “I need to understand why Ukrainian elections produce such bad results. Are Ukrainians just not knowledgeable enough about democracy to vote intelligently?”

“Bah!” he exclaimed with impatience, “You’ve obviously been skimping on the salo and garlic in your diet and not getting enough brain food! It’s got nothing to do with understanding democratic politics; it’s a lack of understanding of sexual politics.”

“Sexual politics??” I blurted out somewhat puzzled. “Have you been indulging too much in that brew from your homemade still again?”

“Not at all” he chortled. “It’s simple. Ukrainians simply don’t elect enough women to Parliament. In the last election, out of 450 deputies there were less than two dozen women. In this election, the results won’t be any different. I just looked at the party election lists in the local paper, the Sometimes Pravda, and see that of the first one hundred spots, the Tymoshenko bloc has only nine women listed, the Nasha Ukrayina bloc has ten, the Party of Regions six, and the Communists nine. With so few women running things, it’s no wonder the country is in such bad shape!”

“I’m not sure I understand…” I stuttered.

“Look, you beets-for-brains,” he continued, “I’ll give you an example. Last year, my neighbour two doors down, Fedya Foolishniuk, inherited $20,000 from a rich uncle in the Excited States of Hammerica. He immediately went out and bought himself the best used BMW he could get at the used car yarmarok. Two nights later, under the influence of a few too many grams of Armenian cognac, he ran the BMW into your cousin Nushia’s old cow, and both the car and cow were totaled. He now not only has nothing to show for his inheritance, but owes Nushia for a replacement cow.”

“Coincidentally” he went on, “A few month’s later, his next door neighbour, Paraska Mudrivna, also inherited $20,000 from her cousin who died in Canada in some place called Edmonchuk, I think. With the money, she fixed her house, bought a used tractor, lent some to her brother to buy a horse, and used the rest to pay off the rector at the University in Lviv to get her son into the school.”

“I think I’m beginning to see what you are getting at” I mumbled.  “You think that women would do a better job at running things, don’t you?” 

“I think your mother found you under a cabbage,” he chuckled, “The same place most of our politicians came from!”