Zaporozhets and “button-crushers”
On October 9, during an Odesa City Council session, journalist Vira Zaporozhets [the last name means “Zaporozhian Cossack” in Ukrainian. – Ed.] covered a vacant voting panel with her hands, thus keeping the absent councilor’s colleagues from pushing the buttons instead of him. The girl’s action raised a storm of indignation in the session room and a wave of support outside it (http://izbirkom.od.ua/content/view/ 6556/1).
It turns out that a recent political crisis in the Verkhovna Rada and frenzied passions about basic democratic principles still kept intact the tradition of “button-crushing” [pushing the button for an absentee. – Ed.]. It continues to corrupt the morals of “the popularly elect,” showing the signs of an incurable and neglected disease.
Sometimes you want to look into their eyes. Are they roving? Are they frozen with indifference? What is reflected in them – the fear of one who crosses the street is a wrong place or the confidence of one who imposes a fine? Is it not interesting to see a person who makes and breaks laws at the same time? Whence are the latter-day Saturns who devour their children? Do you think councilors are briefed daily to do so? Or did they acquire this knowledge by experience? For we have always voted “by the book” – first under the scrutiny of mustachioed, bald, and faceless guys with bushy eyebrows and then under the baton of an overseeing maestro. Cannot we possibly do without a watchful eye in politics?
There are all kinds of rumors to this effect. Some claim it is the promised and lent money that makes deputies docile. It may be fear. The establishment and the management come on it better than on a wing and a prayer. Or, maybe, all this plus piety for the leaders and love of one’s own personality strike the chords of motivation. We have always obeyed unwritten laws and executed unarticulated commands better than the pronounced ones. The boss’s raised eyebrow is the command “Forward,” and lowered eyelids are a signal for reflection: think, you guys! Generals have enough means to rouse troops for an attack and stay behind to have a cup of tea.
Who are these soldiers of the system, who sit under the little party flags like young wolves besieged by hunters? Instead of a forest edge, there are kneeling benches with voting consoles. Once over the threshold, they stick their noses into a newspaper. They don’t read books in front of TV cameras, for it looks yucky and brazen. But the press or a smartphone is just the thing – you pretend to be interested in current events, but in fact you are just doing your number. You have to sit to ensure the quorum and cover the shirkers, i.e., top business tycoons.
Those who keep a low profile do not belong to faction spokespeople whose faces are embedded into TV studios’ interiors, as is the lighting equipment. They are not part of the caste of “eggheads” who know how to make laws. They are not “parliamentary fighter dogs” who rush to the podium at the signal of their party coach to bite into their opponent’s jacket. They are a representative mass, a group of faceless and roleless actors, professional extras. We only know them by the names that appear on roll-call vote lists or when public scandals are highlighted. Finding themselves accidentally in the epicenter of events, they still remain in the shadow. Being unrecognizable saves them, like a saboteur’s camouflage, from the cross-hairs of media snipers and from their opponents’ counterintelligence. They are scouts of the systems. They entered parliament owing to party lists, personal achievements on the front lines of private and criminal life, and a special ability to obey the will of others. “The men in black” of Ukrainian politics, they are – judging by the nature of the “problems addressed” – in fact clerks who are dab hands at running paper go-merry-rounds and gathering signatures for land ownership. Their forced presence at well-lit public assemblies runs counter to the habit of staying in shady personal office rooms. Although they often mix up the manners of behavior in the open doorway and behind closed doors, they always come out of ticklish situations thanks to powerful mechanisms of mimicry.
But even these “perfect functionaries of the system” have an Achilles heel. Taught to eat from a hand and unable to choose the right pattern of behavior and make independent decisions, they are unaware of changes. They failed to notice them either in the person of a fragile girl, Vira, or in the clouds that had gathered over the city.
“Zaporozhets will be a symbol of Odesites’ struggle against corruption and ‘button-crushing’ in the City Council. And even though Zaporozhets in Odesa is not a robust cutthroat with a forelock and a mustache but a tender girl with the optimistic name of Vira [‘faith’. – Ed.], the City Council punks really have someone to be afraid of. Zaporozets will be a Zaporozhets – what if the Sich wakes up?” Odesa politician Andrii Yusov wrote in his blog.
On the same day, October 9, the civic movement Chesno (“Honestly”) exposed the Party of Regions MP V. Omelchenko as “button-crusher.” A total 54 instances of this have been recorded since the 7th-convocation Verkhovna Rada began to work.
If MPs themselves have proved unable to ensure fair voting for so many years, why not use the initiative of Vira Zaporozhets? But it’s better to put a “Cossack-born” sturdy guy, rather than a young miss, to every voting panel. There would be a lot of those who would wish to do this for a third of an MP’s salary. Volunteers will be no problem either. The only (and minor) downside will be bruises on the lawmaking hands.
