As the eyes are the mirror of the human soul, so the assistants, advisors, and consultants are often the mirror of a political soul. This lot also befell Viktor Yushchenko whose advisor Serhiy Soboliev became the mirror of his political soul on the day of his fall.
One could discuss for a long time the comments Mr. Soboliev was generously dishing out in an Era Television program hosted by Serhiy Naboka on the night after the government was voted out. Some of them should be taken with a grain of salt. In particular, this writer would not hazard comparing the performance of any Cabinet of Ministers (especially that of Yushchenko) with Christ’s climb to Golgotha if only for the reasons of human common sense, let alone such a loftier thing as Christian ethics. In any case, the less than successful reform of the energy sector and a semi-bogus redemption of pension arrears is by no means the same as taking upon oneself all the sins of the human race.
Yet, in the long run, it is the question of taste and judgment (or their absence). I would rather touch upon the subject stubbornly promoted by the former premier in his public speeches and by advisor Soboliev in a nighttime UT-1 television program, other members of the entourage, and some of Yushchenko’s ordinary followers. They have been hyping it incessantly and everywhere. What is in question is the government’s moral politics as opposed to the allegedly unholy alliance of oligarchs (read noncommunist part of the anti-government parliamentary majority) and the Communist Party (KPU) with the Progressive Socialists.
In reality, this juxtaposition hides something more serious than cheap political demagogy. This something is the big lie. Listening to Mr. Yushchenko himself and his advisors, you might think that the forces on which the newly formed government, inspired by parliament, tried to rely in its struggle against that same parliament are the embodiment of ideological and moral purity.
Indeed, comparing the ideological reference points and the political behavior model of those Ukrainian political forces, which most consistently opposed and supported the Yushchenko government during the government crisis, conjures up a very interesting picture.
On the one hand, we see a coalition which is, so to speak, the gamut in a certain part of the political spectrum. There are Ukrainian Yabluko (Apple), a social-liberal grouping par excellence; regional ultra-centrist pragmatics from the Regional Renaissance fraction with the Democratic Union known to be its political nucleus; the Center-Left Trudova Ukrayina (Labor Ukraine); and, finally, the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united), the strongest component of a coalition that can be defined as an alliance of the rationally (and socially) minded reformers. This displays a certain continuous line of differing but compatible (which in fact makes cooperation constructive) social forces.
As to Mr. Yushchenko’s followers, the lineup is truly unique. We see here the Socialists stuck in the ideological crack between the Communists and the Social Democrats, the Right-Left Fatherland (declaring a liberal economic model but, for some reason, practicing criminal and bureaucratic methods to achieve it by means of mass unrest and notorious hands-on management); armchair liberals from Reforms and Order; extreme nationalists; national democrats from both Rukhs; and the neo-fascist UNA-UNSO. This is a horrible ideological and organizational motley crew, which someone has found the wit to dub “healthy forces for reform.”
I will, however, dare to infer that the Socialist Party, which has joined efforts with those whom even in Western Ukraine people call Nazis, can be anything (even an organization with certain prospects) but a healthy force.
It is not so easy to say why this kind of an incongruous coalition could come into existence at all. However, the first thing that catches your eye and applies to all the political groupings that support the ex-premier is that they are outsiders, second and third-rate participants in the political process. What we in fact see is an alliance of losers without either ideology or principles who are ready for anything in order to avoid political oblivion.
These circumstances, in my opinion, characterize quite clearly the moral and political face of the so-called reformer’s supporters. I will only add that, while the concurrence of stands taken in the parliament by the Centrist and far Left (Communists and Progressive Socialists) is purely situational, imposing no obligations on anyone (this always happens when different people have, for various reasons, the same opponent), cooperation within the “Yushchenko bloc” has been streamlined not only politically but also to a considerable extent organizationally (the Forum of National Salvation, the Resistance Movement, etc.), no matter how preposterously looks, as I said above, the alliance of Marxist Socialists, a multimillionaire reformer from the team of an embezzler premier (I mean Lazarenko, not Yushchenko), and UNA-UNSO.
As to the supposedly anti-oligarchic nature of the pro-governmental minority in Verkhovna Rada, I would only want to ask these fighters of oligarchs only one question: if the party of Yuliya Tymoshenko is not a classic Latin American style oligarchic grouping (specific not in having national peculiarities but in being an offended group that has lost the game), then what is an oligarchic party in general? I speak from the perspective of a person who never draws on hearsay to learn about the situation. Fate had it that this writer created and ran for a few months the Fatherland branch in one of Kyiv’s largest districts, but this experience weaned me from political activity for a long time to come.
And, in general, if all those who support the representatives of foreign capital (whose loyal servant the outgoing government was) are to be listed as neo-oligarchs, then it is better to bear the label of oligarch. Moreover, the accusation of amorality, in fact hurled at parliament from the government box, is far better than any true reproach for betrayal of Ukraine’s national interests and completely unprincipled policies. This reproach can be justly addressed precisely to the outgoing Cabinet’s head.







