Self-styled stage directors

It appears that the snow-covered Orange Maidan had its stage directors and script writers, concrete persons who made sure the stage was kept busy, that the right kind of music sounded at the right time. However, the nation proved to be the main stage director, script writer, producer, and star of last year’s show. A year later, on Nov. 22, the date scheduled for this celebration, the nation will most likely be both onlooker and critic. It will gather and look the government that it elected in the eyes. Or maybe it will watch the “battles without rules,” which are very likely. Or it will listen to musicians who will remain interesting regardless of the political weather and landscape — or it will not come. As a matter of fact, no one has considered this possibility during the many discussions on the topic of the Orange anniversary. Of course, there is no doubt that some people will come out, and in the extreme case a crowd will be organized. But will the Nation come as it did then, driven by a single effort? If it does, what will it see?

Our information space has long been packed with Orange anniversary materials. This, however, does not make the picture of the scheduled festivities any clearer. We know that the organizers, including representatives of different political forces that took part in acts of civil unrest in November-December 2004 , will try to recreate the atmosphere and style of last year’s events. There is a plan to mount a huge screen and a podium on the old site. The question is who will be there and what statements will be made. During the latest meeting of the organizing group it was agreed that the once unified Orange team and their leaders Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko will mark the anniversary on the Maidan together.

A statement to this effect was issued by the ex-prime minister’s aide Oleh Medvedev.

Another official, Mykola Katerynchuk, the chairman of the executive committee of the People’s Union “Our Ukraine,” declared that all political forces, except the opposition (probably the old one, not the new one that formed within the Orange ranks) will take part in the festivities. Katerynchuk described the festivities as “a square of freedom to which any political forces that supported the Orange” coalition can come and express their views on Ukraine’s progress and what is happening in this country.”

This could have been the end of the prognostications concerning the festivities commemorating the anniversary of the revolution, if not for other statements that have been made by other likely participants of the Maidan events. Recently, Mykola Tomenko, the former deputy prime minister for humanitarian affairs, citing his conversation with an SBU official, declared that there is a list of politicians who should not be allowed to appear on the stage on the revolution’s anniversary, and that his name is at the top of the list. There is also Oleh Medvedev’s statement to the effect that the BYuT and Our Ukraine have differing views on the anniversary. “Whereas for Our Ukraine this anniversary means singing and dancing on the Maidan, we insist that it must be a report to the people by the leaders of the Maidan about what has been done in one year, and where Ukraine is head ing,” Medvedev said in a newspaper interview. He added that Tymoshenko, who will be making a number of sensational announcements, will devote her speech to this. He also said that the members of the BYuT have no intentions of confronting the Ukrainian president’s entourage, but that there will be “no room for those accused of corruption on the Maidan. If Petro Poroshenko and others like him go to the grandstands, they will be catcalled not only by our supporters but Yushchenko’s,” Tymoshenko’s adviser predicts.

However, judging by the current mood, practically all of the Orange Revolution leaders who stood on the square last year will attend the Nov. 22 festivities. President Yushchenko will be there; the need for his presence does not require any commentaries. So will Poroshenko, whose press secretary Iryna Friz said that he “has nothing to feel ashamed about, first because he is prepared to account for every step he took while in office, and second because all the statements about his corruption have already turned into a soap bubble.” Another politician accused of corruption, Our Ukraine faction leader Mykola Martynenko, believes that “conclusions concerning ‘treason’ or ‘loyalty’ with regard to the Maidan ideals on the part of any political force should be made outside the Maidan and preferably not on the anniversary of the Orange events.” NSDC Secretary Anatoliy Kinakh, who simply wants to celebrate the anniversary of the victory “of good over evil, honesty over falsification,” will also be there. Yulia Tymoshenko is going to celebrate the Orange anniversary together with people who stood on the Maidan. One can definitely expect the former state secretary and leader of the Patriotic Forces Party, Oleksandr Zinchenko, who believes that the anniversary should be marked “peacefully and normally” and who also finds it difficult to predict his reaction if he should meet President Yushchenko on the Maidan. Despite the SBU’s warnings, Mykola Tomenko will be certainly on the Maidan; he believes that the order of speakers is of secondary importance. In his opinion, the Maidan festivities should not turn into a “show featuring one or three actors.” He says that the representatives of the BYuT are planning to report to the people what they have accomplished. Meanwhile, the head of the Presidential Secretariat, Oleh Rybachuk, has a skeptical attitude to the proposal that ministers should deliver reports on the year that has passed since the revolution: “How do you picture this? Five hundred thousand people come out and the ministers start on their reports? The people listen breathlessly and think: ‘What’s happening?’”

Other noted politicians, who found themselves on the other side of the revolutionary barricade last year, have commented on the most optimal scenarios of the Orange anniversary festivities. Ukraine’s first president and SDPU(U) leader Leonid Kravchuk believes that the politicians who made promises on the Maidan must attend the Orange anniversary and bow their heads low before all of Ukraine and apologize for failing to keep their promises. According to Kravchuk, the Orange Revolution leaders must say something to the effect: “We can see our shortcomings, our mistakes, so once again we swear that we shall honor our commitments, and that if we fail to do so in a year’s time, we’ll retire and go away.” Kravchuk, however, is not planning to go to the Maidan: “They beat their chests, they brought in all the priests there and said in their presence that we will live in accordance with the law and our constitution, not according to poniattia [prison canons; an allusion to Yanukovych’s criminal past — Ed.]...now everything is the other way around, so why should I go to the Maidan and bear responsibility for them?”

On Nov. 11 it was learned that the Ukrainian presidential secretariat’s Orange anniversary scenario envisages casting lots to determine the order of speakers on the Maidan. Despite the outwardly democratic manner of settling possible conflicts, this looks like another mockery of the memory of the Maidan.