The really good news is how Anatoly Matviyenko left the People's
Democratic Party, telling one and all exactly how he sees the situation,
then bringing both factions of Rukh together to negotiate on a single candidate
as a non-leftist alternative to the do-nothing incumbent. It is not that
he said anything anybody did not know already, but that the outgoing leader
of the former party of power said it. After all, he should know better
than most. Of course, now we have a new party of power, the United Social
Democrats backed by oligarch and mayoral hopeful Hryhory Surkis, so prospects
for the NDP and its new leader, Prime Minister Pustovoitenko, look anything
but bright.
People like former Chornovil press secretary Dmytro Ponomarchuk (I have
known him almost a decade), who stated in Kievskie Vedomosti and
Fakty i komentarii how he would never allow Rukh-1 to make peace
with "Kostenko's people" (Rukh-2) forget that politics is a dirty business,
and sometimes one has to forgive and forget. After all, a restored Soviet
Ukraine (which is what the hard Left seems to want) or five more years
of the current sclerosed kleptocracy with a sure win for the Reds afterward
is a pretty grim choice for anyone who wishes this country well. The main
question of the coming presidential elections will be whether this country
wants to commit suicide quickly (the Red peril), slowly (the status quo),
or wants to find a way out and set about becoming European in more than
purely geographical terms. It is high time for all those who sincerely
want the latter to bury the hatchet and stop fighting over who did what
to the late Vyacheslav Chornovil. He would not have wanted either the first
or second option.






