WHEN RULES ARE UNNEEDED

In a situation, when the “new opposition” never managed to find itself a place in the actual political lineup, our implacable militants of national salvation have only one way to remain within the framework of the political process: to set this framework themselves and then work within it as if it had always been so. If I have failed to express this clearly enough, just imagine a group of individuals who want to become national champions in soccer. Since it is a long and almost hopeless thing to win this title within the official championship framework, they come up with a new set of rules which allow playing across, not alongside, the pitch by hand and not by feet. In this case, whoever holds a tournament according to the new rules will become champion, although nobody will recognize him as such.

There can be many examples of political games without rules on the fields of Ukrainian politics. What contributes to this is on the one hand the absence of all the necessary laws to regulate political activity and on the other ignoring even the laws that exist.

Suddenly aware of the tremendous gains they can make out of the very process of preparing and holding a referendum, opposition stalwarts of all hues rushed headlong to initiate one to allow the masses to see through various politicians. The less advanced part of the self- proclaimed national saviors at first denounced a referendum of no- confidence in Leonid Kuchma as a futile thing that would do no good. And only later did the fruitful referendum idea of Yuliya Tymoshenko’s image-makers begin to capture the like-minded political masses. Now the only question is what kind of shape the conceived referendum will take, who will hold it, and how many of these referendums there will be.

As parliamentary elections approach, those who wish to win a seat would do well to concentrate their efforts for a new election law to be passed as soon as possible and for the rules of parliamentary race to be officially settled and approved. Why is this not being done? Because within the existing constitutional framework, the so- called new opposition has rather slim chances to make its way into parliament, let alone come to power. This is why they are active on the field where no rules are so far in force. Is it a correct calculation that the noise made about the anti- presidential referendum will help a group of politicians to make themselves a name on the eve of the elections? Chairman of the rather interesting Rukh-3 Bohdan Boiko has already shown a way to profane all the referendum-related activities of some opposition members. It is beyond doubt that if necessary the Central Election Commission will raise the number of referendums to at least that of 1999 presidential candidates, if not to that of registered parties. This will be enough to finally nonplus the people and make them vote for opposite things at the same time.

A contest without rules is special in that it is easy to win, but it produces not a real winner but only one who has proclaimed himself such. Proclaiming oneself God knows who is traditionally typical of those who are, to put it mildly, not the most authoritative. This is why the self-proclaimed saviors are not being followed by any kind of, let alone broad, masses. There are too many saviors who want too many different things from the people.