PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS: DRESS REHEARSAL FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN? Main result the working out of special technologies
Allegations that the parliamentary elections were the first lap of the presidential race seem to have spread far and wide. Turnout percentage is being computed, starting chances, and lost opportunities assessed. An attempt is being made to “rehabilitate” the authorities: the Left did not actually score a victory, it is just a temporary success. Otherwise nothing out of the ordinary, because everything that happened had been predicted. As for the majority constituencies, why great! Here the Left lost to the good old nomenklatura and latter-day “businessmen.”
In a word, all is fine and dandy. Except that the Crimean trial ground demands that the results of yet another experiment be recorded, because they are too obvious to be ignored. Feodosiya, previously run by a Communist mayor, is now under a businessman known to rub elbows with a certain Bily. The authorities do not seem to mind this. Bily’s name was often mentioned by Crimean Tatars during the Feodosiya and Sudak pogroms in the summer of 1995 (they said they were fighting bashmak bandits). Also, if one remembers how brutally effectively local crime was dealt with in Yalta before the elections (Oleksandr Kalius, Secretary of the City Council, is still on missing persons lists after refusing to surrender his office to Presidential appointee, Volodymyr Marchenko, Acting Secretary), what can be inferred from the Feodosiya situation? Probably quite an unexpected conclusion. Should Anatoly Matviyenko, one of the NDP leaders and head of the Vinnytsia state administration, continue campaigning for the invalidation of MP immunity, he could be the first victim of his own populism, considering the new political witch-hunt, change of political winds, or just by a whim of fate. The more so that he is known to have said something about joining the opposition.
Trying to figure out the alignment of forces in Parliament takes a lot of patience. The main question stemming from the elections is, What difference does it make when such-and-such sides or otherwise comes to terms with thuh-and-so? How will this affect the country where police information that Mykhailo Tiutiunnyk, Chairman of the Crimean Supreme Court, spent an “additional” Hr 10,000 at the elite Foros resort and should be brought to justice on charges of corruption makes no headlines? If it did and if the case were really investigated, quite a few interesting things would be uncovered, from the reasons behind the sudden outburst of militia incorruptibility to whether this Hr 10,000 was the worst sin committed by the Judge.
What difference does it make for Ukraine who pulls off the smartest trick in Parliament and gets the prize seats? This country has responded calmly to armed militia squads dispatched to “pacify” local self-government officials, arrests of political rivals, pre-election assassinations, Crimean elections with armored personnel carriers as part of the setting, and funny arithmetical mistakes by district election committees... This country does not seem to realize that all this is a dress rehearsal for the presidential campaign, and never mind statistics and high turnout percentage. The powers that be have demonstrated that they will stop at nothing to reach their goals. Since the government machine is rusty and the vertical of power looks more like a wavy dotted line, the next campaign will be even more painful than an executioner with a blunt ax.
The following is a graphic example of how the law can be scorned. It is a statement The Day received from Volodymyr Mykolaichuk who ran for the Crimean Parliament in Constituency No. 66.
“On March 30, 1998, when counting the votes in Constituency No. 66, I was found to have collected 64 votes more than the other contenders. At 13.00 p.m. that same day the signed records (“protocols”) of the vote at all electoral districts were submitted to the editorial office of the newspaper Zoria Prysivashya, and it published them on March 31, 1998. That same day, however, changes were made in the official records, completely distorting the results.”
An excerpt from People’s Deputy Lev Myrymsky’s statement addressed to Republican Prosecutor V. Shuba: “... and then a protocol appeared signed by almost every election committee member, without specifying the number of votes for each candidate. 72 hours after the election date, a protocol was submitted to the Central Election Committee of the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea, attesting to the victory of V.O. Stambolin.” The Day has a copy of the protocol with the votes column left blank and Article 128 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code envisages up to two years in prison or a labor camp for falsifying electoral documents...
Since Mr. Stambolin is considered a close associate of the Crimean Premier, one can only wonder what all those international observers did in Ukraine? Well, what can one expect from foreigners who still cannot understand how gasoline can be diluted with urine and, most importantly, to what end?...
Our close foreign neighbors are worried trying to figure out if the Left will have enough strength to change the course of reform. Funny! If they don’t and we will stay on course, so what? We will continue rotting away slowly but surely, living on funds lent for that reform, with such loans steadily decreasing. Then those remaining in power will have to use this election experience in the next campaign, falsifying everything nationwide, without even pretending to remember about the election laws and Constitution. A country silently watching police cordons by one or two city halls and making no indignant response to People’s Deputies being taken away in police cars or a couple of candidates getting killed, along with a handful of journalists, and asking no questions when told that such-and-such is a bandit, must be prepared to wake up tomorrow to see police cars and armed patrols on every street, to hear daily gunplay and watch verdicts returned on TV screens.
The alignment of forces in the new Parliament matters little. What matters is the intensity of confrontation between the legislature and the executive, including the President. The people showed a varying degree of indifference to liberal actresses, former all-USSR vocal stars, and democratic soccer players running for the Verkhovna Rada, perhaps correctly relying on Christ’s words: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” The people cast their votes, probably as a tribute to nostalgic memories. This is dangerous because it proves the disheartening allegation that the next elections in Ukraine will follow the Crimean scenario, with “democracy” supported by bayonets or without any democracy. The “dress rehearsal” leaves little room for hope. Figuratively speaking, the people have voted against the incumbent regime and its political course. It is unlikely that they will be given another chance to do so, openly and directly. We are told that the Left came to power, but theirs is not actually a majority. Sounds too good to be true. On the other hand, if the Left took Parliament, lock, stock, and barrel, we would at least know where we stood. Of course, they would set to work with utmost enthusiasm, adding to the chaos, finally making everyone see them for what they really are, including the President’s entourage who would jump at the opportunity. The Chief Executive would then recall what he had intended to do to Parliament if it got “wrong”, would consult his Russian counterpart, and then the ax would fall. After that the scenario could vary in minor detail but would have the invariable finale (considering the executive’s peculiar gift of planning something and achieving precisely the opposite result): parliamentary and presidential reelections. Someone else would come to power, to try to run a country robbed clean, and worst of all, without being trusted by anybody, in which situation reform would be out of the question.
So let us sit back and marvel at the Left turning out not as numerically significant as was expected, until the next criminal-political hunting season with its ethnic specificities graphically demonstrated in the first lap of the presidential race.
Photo by Valery Myloserdov, The Day:
A holy place
