Protest for Export: Take and Reallocate
Our Ukraine’s first actual mass action (previously elaborated upon by block leader Viktor Yushchenko for quite some time) started last Tuesday, near the cabinet building. It was triggered by OU people spotting discrepancies between approved budget spending and revenue items (allegedly to be received from economic growth). Using simple arithmetic, the action organizers came up with the bold inference that part of the budget revenue was being concealed by the government and used for bad, even antipopular purposes. The electorate was thus faced with the simple conclusion that Premier Yanukovych had to be made to part with all those secreted budget receipts, and that the latter should be distributed among the impoverished pensioners and other low- income strata.
The architects of the protest actions ignored the perfectly logical assumption that the central budget is replenished and spent via mechanisms more sophisticated than the four rules of arithmetic, let alone the key take-and-divide motto that has little in common with the right-wing ideas, where Our Ukraine positions itself these days.
Staging actions of protest is not legally prohibited in Ukraine, and the same is true of forwarding demands to the government, of course. What made this action of protest (and its sequel, March 31, in downtown Kyiv) especially interesting was the technological aspect, namely whether the protest against the budget would turn out as those “adequate measures” with which Viktor Yushchenko had threatened the powers that be. How would they differ from the usual opposition march tactic, considering that the capital has noticeably lost interest in such political shows.
As it was, the “adequate measures,” meant to have almost all of Ukraine rise up in arms against the regime, proved a poorly mixed cocktail of previously used technologies. Eleven bright yellow tents bearing the legend YUSHCHENKO: YES were set up on Hrushevsky Street, by the cabinet building, but they little resembled those during the 2000 protest action, even less so the tents set up during the “student revolution” in the early 1990s. In this case, the tents looked stylish and expensive, reminiscent of an outdoor promotional campaign.
Nor did the Yushchenko supporters’ manifestation look terribly impressive, a far cry from the winter rallies in Georgia or the recent ones in Spain — although this was precisely what the demonstration architects expected, with the marchers obediently carrying posters and slogans hailing the OU leader.
It looks as though the whole action were meant for foreign rather than domestic audiences. Bright yellow tents and people waving banners could not have passed unnoticed by Polish President Aleksandr Kwasniewski, as he was scheduled to meet with Ukrainian Premier Viktor Yanukovych at that time. US financier George Soros, by a miraculous coincidence, arrived in Kyiv precisely on the date of the action of protest. Needless to say, foreign television companies had their cameras and reporters ready and broadcast and taped everything: Soros, Kwasniewski, and the action of protest.
As for pressuring the government, it is not likely to work. Eleven tents and several thousand protesters brought from the provinces are unable to make any changes in the venues of monetary flows from the budget. They are pressing the wrong buttons.
Ukrainians that did not have to report on the implementation of investment funds were faced with a problem having nothing to do with Our Ukraine’s protests. Hundreds of thousands of accountants were anxiously awaiting the enforcement of VAT accounts, unsure what that innovation had in store for them. Businesspeople and economists believed that the institution of the accounts ought to have caused mass protest and public unrest. Nothing happened, because the sad fact remains that the protest actions staged in Ukraine are mostly for export — although we have quite enough domestic reasons.
