by Gena Gorlin | Ukraine’s election scandal is a lesson in “democracy.”
While on this side of the Atlantic disgruntled American leftists clutter the Canadian immigration website, in Eastern Europe, the Ukraine faces a real election crisis. Since its presidential run-off election on November 21st, the Ukraine has erupted in mass protests and chaotic unrest. Thirteen years after the Soviet empire’s collapse, the Ukraine continues to struggle under a corrupt government that manages (and in large part mismanages) daily life. The election, which was officially overturned by the Ukrainian Supreme Court on December 3rd as fraudulent and invalid, eloquently illustrated the governing style that has characterized the Ukraine’s regime. Outgoing President Kuchma handpicked Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych to succeed him, who then received massive funding and political support from Kuchma’s “boys.” The government-controlled media vigorously endorsed Yanukovych; Kuchma’s government undertook every effort to rally support for its favored pro-Russian candidate. Yet, rightly concerned that all their propaganda efforts would fail to sway a sufficient percentage of corruption-weary voters, Kuchma’s supporters proceeded to rig the election anyway.
When Yanukovych was mysteriously declared the winner in an election that, by all poll counts, should clearly have favored opposition candidate Viktor Yuschenko, hundreds of thousands of protestors flooded the capital’s Independence Square in indignation. Throughout the country, particularly in the largely nationalistic, Yuschenko-supporting Western regions, workers went on strike and enraged demonstrators took to the streets. Yet the West was not alone in contesting Yanukovych’s dubious “victory.” In the largely pro-Russian eastern regions, Yuschenko also enjoyed the support of frustrated voters who had been disenfranchised by widespread election fraud. Indeed, the underhanded tactics that, according to the Court’s ruling, skewed election results in nine eastern regions would not have been necessary had eastern-dwellers overwhelmingly preferred Yanukovych.
Contrary to its depiction in most media sources, the election was not fundamentally about East versus West or Russia versus Europe; it was about freedom and fairness versus corrupt, Soviet-style bureaucracy. Nationalist and Pro-Russian Ukrainians alike have grown fed up with a government that stifles their freedom of political expression, and impedes economic sovereignty (with a repugnantly corrupt tax code that even the bribe-accepting tax collectors do not attempt to enforce), in order to promote its own political agenda.
In response to the Supreme Court decision to annul the election and call for a second run-off to be held on December 26th, Yuschenko’s supporters burst into jubilant cheers—heralding what Yuschenko has described as a turn toward “justice, democracy and freedom.” It was as though the people of the Ukraine breathed a general sigh of relief on Friday, after enduring weeks of tension and years of stagnant corruption under Kuchma’s government.
The sighs could be heard resonating even on Tufts’ campus, where students sympathetic with the Ukraine’s stumbling efforts toward freedom and political modernization demonstrated on behalf of Yuschenko. Stephan Vitvitsky, whose family immigrated from the western part of Ukraine, has organized a movement to “Tie an Orange Ribbon for Democracy” (orange is Yuschenko’s official campaign color). Vitvitsky supports Yuschenko not because of any specific national policy, he told the SOURCE, but because the opposition candidate represents an alternative to the “blatantly corrupt” government that has persistently plagued the Ukraine. Yuschenko, though arguably far from perfect on matters of foreign policy and national politics, offers the hope of “Western-style liberal democracy instead of managed democracy” in the Ukraine, Vitvitsky explained.
President Bush’s administration, recognizing that the Ukrainian election crisis taps into a far deeper conflict than the issue of Ukrainian troops in Iraq, has expressed solidarity with the popular movement to hold a second run-off. “What is important now is to move ahead quickly… to ensure a new vote that is fair, free and that results in an outcome that reflects the will of the Ukrainian people,” said Richard Boucher, spokesman for the State Department. The bitter division that has torn the Ukraine at the seams has less to do with geographic loyalties than with a shared weariness on the part of the Ukrainian people, coupled with an overwhelming desire for reform. It is freedom and honest government that the Ukraine’s citizens want; values that, as one Ukrainian immigrant testified, they desire so badly they can “almost taste.”
Ironically, it is in this country, where freedom and democracy are complacently taken for granted, that a truly democratic election results in vehement protests and demonstrations just short of violent upheaval. In the Ukraine, a country rife with political turmoil, mass poverty, and the deep wounds left by seven decades of Soviet domination, the people are demanding an honest election to settle their disputes. Yet in the United States, a country whose people enjoy abundant prosperity, democracy, and a far-reaching freedom of political expression, an honest election invokes such bitter rage from “dissenters” that one might think a political apocalypse has dawned. Perhaps the disgruntled Americans waiting in line to get their foreign passports ought to pay the Ukraine a visit, reflect, and consider what kind of government they are really after—and what a great country they are yearning to leave behind.
Miss Gorlin is a freshman who has not yet declared a major.
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