Ukraine: Soviet-Style Smokescreens

By Oksana Bashuk Hepburn

The incredible happened in Ukraine a few weeks ago. The former fraudulent presidential candidate ousted by the Orange Revolution, Victor Yanukovych, became the Prime Minister. Yesterday’s criminals are today’s political leaders. The President: a puppet. The people: duped. Democracy: undermined.

These developments were accompanied by noble talk: “Parliament united under the Party of Regions is the right thing for Ukraine’s national unity. It will avert a national crisis.”

This is smoke and mirrors in the best of the former USSR tradition. In democracies, unity in parliament is not a virtue. Parliament requires at least two strong players from opposing camps to represent and balance differences and to debate issues. Major democracies–the United States, Britain, Germany, and Canada–are not monolithic. They are united despite major polarizations.

The difference between the successful democracies and today’s Ukraine is the manner in which political issues get resolved. Successful democracies resolve their issues in parliament. Ukraine’s post-election scenario was played outside its rules. Indeed, the manner in which President Victor Yushchenko called upon the current government to serve undermines parliament and is a dangerous step back towards dictatorship.

The real winners of the March elections, Yulia Tymoshenko’s Bloc and the Orange coalition, which obtained a slight majority of seats, were stalled for four months from sitting in parliament by the President. This was shocking and offensive to democrats. To temper the negative reaction, Yushchenko's inaction was given a seductive, but false spin: “The President is deliberating what is best for national unity.”

Nonsense. The stalling occurred because the voters made the “wrong ‘choice as far as the oligarchs were concerned. The people wanted Tymoshenko as their Prime Minister. The Party of Regions did not, nor did it want to play according to democratic rules. It would not take its rightful place as the minority and become the opposition. It refused to recognize that it had received only 36 per cent of the votes. It worked to have the people’s choice reversed.

The President acted as if the elections did not matter. He did not press the rules of democratic behaviour, that parliament must be constituted by creating the government from those who have the majority, and the opposition from those who received fewer votes. The democratic process was by-passed for months. Then it was too late. The powerful few, not the people, got their way.

The back-sliding away from democracy continues. Ukraine’s political leaders, including the President and his newly appointed Prime Minister, claim to want to resolve east/west and pro-Russia/pro-West­ differences by creating a unified political force in parliament. Some of the President’s Our Ukraine Party members have already agreed to serve in Yanukovych's cabinet.

Political forces that aim to “unite” Ukraine politically do not stray far from the Communist model. Today’s situation in Ukraine is a dj vu and Soviet in style and execution. The tactic is to undermine freedom and democracy and confuse the situation by spinning pretty words and slogans. The reconstitution of parliament into one unified team is nothing less than a reversal to the one-party system. Of course the USSR’s single Communist party kept the country united. Unity was achieved through terror, brute force, control of the press, and total obedience. This tyrannical unity cost Ukrainians four famines, the biggest in 1933 taking a toll of some 10 million people. For 70 years, any opposition was suppressed by death or the Gulag.

Why is it that after 15 years of government exchanges and millions of dollars invested in educating Ukrainians in how democracy and public administration works in the West, there are now such political perversions happening? The situation is as much our shame as Ukraine’s.

The recent events underscore how meagre the results have been and how shallow the changes in Ukrainians’ understanding of democracy,

It is scandalous that today’s Prime Minister is yesterday’s cheater, that his entourage comprises men like billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, who at 36 is in Fortune magazine’s list of the world’s wealthiest, while an average Ukrainian lives in dire poverty with about 100 dollars a month to sustain him. It is scandalous that President Yushchenko denied his people their choice for prime minister and succumbed to manipulations. Even more so, now that he is mouthing that the Orange Revolution is but a myth and a legend. The Prime Minister, in the meantime, boasts of having participated in it to build a just nation.

It is scandalous that the West won the war against Communism, saw the Soviet empire crumble, supported Ukraine during its feisty Orange Revolution, only to allow this ally in global democracy-building to slip so perilously close to the edge. Even more scandalous is that the West may have orchestrated this in order to have good business relations with the oligarchs.

Things might have been different. The best case scenario for democracy would have been for the President to have stood with his people. Seeing their will disregarded, the people might have returned to the streets where they were victorious two years ago, to demand a re-elections or his resignation. The West might have become furious and called in its ambassadors to exert pressure and might have told its consulting firm that it is more in America’s interest to have a democratic Ukraine than to have it perverted in the name of doing business.

This did not happen. Instead, democracy has had a setback. The only bright spot now is Yulia Tymoshenko. She has declared that she will not join the Party of Regions to form a united front in parliament. She will lead the opposition and deal with the real national crisis: the oligarchs’ intention to control all aspects of life in Ukraine.

When Ukraine got its independence in 1991, hope quickly turned to the realization that, in fact, little had changed. The Communist gang that had ruled Ukraine was still at the helm. It had wrapped itself in Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag to amass great wealth. Yet some hard-fought gains were made: free elections and greater freedoms, especially in the media. Now, it is feared, even that has been lost.

The fear is real. Restrictions have already begun. Freedom of speech and of the press have been attacked. Some journalists were recently beaten and several independent media outlets closed. In the Rada, there have been moves to undermine the political checks and balances system by further restricting the President’s powers–perhaps, in case the next one might be more difficult to control.

Today, more than ever, Ukraine needs a strong opposition. Tymoshenko has a huge job in front of her. The West must wake up. It must rally behind democracy and help Tymoshenko do a good job as the watch-dog of the people. Aid should be directed towards resuscitating democracy. In turn, Ukraine’s citizens need to support her efforts and monitor how she stands up for their interests. If she does this well, the people will likely reward her in the next election. And punish the tricksters.

Oksana Bashuk Hepburn, President of U-CAN, a consulting firm, is writing a book about the current situation in Ukraine.