Who will find a way out of the chaos,

Entrepreneurs are going to support a protest action of Chornobyl nuclear power plant disaster victims on December 14, The Day Chornobyl disaster fighters are honored, Natalia Korolevska, chairperson of the parliamentary Committee for Industrial and Re-gulatory Policy and Entrepreneurship, announced at a UNIAN press conference. “The Chornobyl veterans will stage a protest action on December 14, and we will undoubtedly support it,” the MP said. In her words, on the same day Khmelnytsky will be hosting an “interregional Maidan” in which entrepreneurs will also take part.

Korolevska said negotiations with the Chornobyl veterans had resulted in the drawing up and submitting two bills to parliament: on introducing changes to the State Budget Law, including clauses on obeying judicial rulings about Chornobyl and Afghan War veterans, and “children of the war,” as well as on canceling privileges and increasing pensions for MPs and Cabinet ministers. If parliament fails to discuss these bills before February 1, a date will be named for joint protest actions by entrepreneurs, Chornobyl and Afghan War veterans, students, and other underprivileged strata of the population, Korolevska promised.

The current government must be accustomed to criticism and the opposition’s promises of public resistance, as well as to protest actions. Its performance has been causing societal discontent in fact since the very first days in office. For almost every initiative of the current Cabinet has run the gauntlet of public rallies and protests. Yet the cauldron of people’s patience seems to be approaching the boiling point. The ongoing social debate is more and more ba-lancing on the brink of a social explosion.

Is the government aware that the latest events and human toll is the limit that must not be crossed? I doubt it. In particular, a reliable source from First Vice-Premier Andrii Kliuiev’s inner circle told The Day that the Cabinet saw no reason why it should resign. “We cannot give in to all the demands [of the Chornobyl and Afghan veterans], we have no money for this,” Serhii Tihipko, Vice-Prime Minister and Minister for Social Politics, tried to justify himself at a recent congress of employers. For, to satisfy the demands of all the privileged categories of people, one should find 170 billion hryvnias. “We must undoubtedly heed the people, but there is a limit that we cannot cross,” Tihipko emphasized.

Indeed, there is a limit that cannot be crossed, but it is measured not by money but by the degree of sincerity in the dialogue between the government and society. For the main thing which all those who are taking to the streets today are complaining about is simulation of communication. What rouses the indignation of society today is the illusion of “concessions” instead of a radical solution of the conflict. Add to this the lack of responsibility for words and actions. This in fact makes it quite possible that, in an attempt to draw support from a certain category of the populace, the government will not resist the temptation of promising them a twofold wage hike in the next elections. Then, having won the elections, they will be racking their brain over how to fulfill what they promised. Quite predictably, they may limit the number of those eligible for privileges and identify the poorest of the poor. And is not the Chornobyl and Afghan veterans or pensioners who introduced the privileges which the current government says are breaking the back of the budget.

Now that social discontent is on the rise the government continues, for some reason, to behave illogically: instead of repairing the communication channels, about which society complains, it is being “dug in” with communication barriers, setting up metal fences and police cordons. In response, society is also reinforcing its defenses. In particular, entrepreneurs intend to form a committee to defend protesters. “It is a committee for protecting the people who have taken to the streets and who should be certain that, in case of violence on the part of the authorities, we will furnish them with parliamentary, legal, judicial, and civil protection,” Korolevska said. But can a full-fledged dialogue take place in these conditions if each of the sides is “in armor”?

In an interview with MIM-Kyiv president Iryna Tykhomyrova, Den tried to find out the effective behavioral algorithm for business at a time when the government-society dialogue is growing tense (see “On Being Able to Listen and Ask Questions,” The Day No. 70, December 6, 2011). In the expert’s opinion, now that this country is between a rock and a hard place, business stands a good chance to show its civic position in honest work, not on the streets. Read the following commentaries on whether regional entrepreneurs agree with their Kyiv colleague.

COMMENTARIES

Roman FEDYSHYN, general manager, Shuvar Ltd., Lviv:

“It is all the people, not only entrepreneurs, who are feeling social tension in Ukraine. To survive in this situation, the Ukrainians should work much more. I think all of us, citizens of Ukraine, are paying too little attention to work efficiency in any sector – it is our ailment, our problem. The trouble is we have lost such an important idea as cult of labor. This applies to everybody, including the current government.”

Natalia SHOLOMEICHUK, chairperson, entrepreneurs’ trade union Protection of Justice, Ternopil:

“The only way out for us in this situation is to defend ourselves together and not to throw up our hands. We managed to survive in the hard times, when, at the dawn of Ukrainian independence, the state simply threw us out of our jobs; we managed to survive and not to lose heart. We did it only because we mobilized ourselves. Now, too, we should rally and mobilize ourselves, and defend our rights together. Nobody will ever do this for us unless we do it ourselves.”

Borys KLUNKO, private entrepreneur, Dnipropetrovsk:

“I must say entrepreneurs are just watching what is going on in this country because pressure on business is mounting. Business activity is on the decline – at least in the field I work in. The number of construction orders is diminishing. The main cause is that entrepreneurs are not in a position to receive hryvnia loans on favorable conditions. There are no problems with euro and dollar loans, but businesspeople, taught by the 2008 crisis, are chary of taking them. As far as I can understand, this is connected with the National Bank’s financial policy. Another tendency is that local entrepreneurs are being ousted from certain spheres of business. Even some well-known companies are leaving the market, perhaps transferring their capitals to other business sectors or to the gray economy. But entrepreneurs are unlikely to take to the streets in the nearest future. As the economy is their main sphere of activity, they are seeking to survive in the new conditions. At best, business can render financial and organizational support to political parties and social movements – as they did during the Orange Revolution. Incidentally, I think the years 2006-08 was the best time for business: power changed in the country, bureaucrats no longer ruled the roost, and pressure eased for some time. Now everything is back to ‘pre-revolutionary’ times. But I do not think the opposition will gather mass-scale support in the parliamentary elections. In all probability, the situation will have come to a head by the next presidential elections, when voting for a certain candidate may change the situation in Ukraine.”