Privatization of a Logo
As usual, it all started amid great pomp and the highest ambitions, as over seventy natural persons (a complete list of whom the press somehow did not get) early this year founded in Verkhovna Rada the National Salvation Forum and got down at once to saving our souls. If, however, political tradition is any guide, organizations with the word, salvation, in their titles tend to appear when a certain country is without government or with a government which cannot rule the country. Our domestic saviors wanted such a scenario to unfold last winter, presenting the situation in a similar vein and using their pocket mass media or Western correspondents. The forum demanded that the president sit at the negotiating table to discuss the future of Ukraine. Leonid Kuchma responded by suggesting that the forum register first.
Under similar situations, such a response typically cuts through the verbiage at once, and a pause ensues. As a rule, the registration becomes an unrealized project. If, however, the registration is completed, only some of those most vociferous at the start get registered.
This was precisely the case with the National Salvation Forum. The forum that began to gradually fade into the political background has resurfaced again as newly emerging election blocs start to choose proper names for themselves. Rumors that Yuliya Tymoshenko has become heir to the forum’s brand name when the new opposition broke up confirmed last Tuesday when invited members of the press witnessed this grand event. The presence of tough guards at the entrance and in the session hall clearly indicated who was calling the shots that day. The formal signing of an agreement to create a bloc led by Tymoshenko proved to be a poorly orchestrated action that was boring even to its participants.
Mrs. Tymoshenko, resolute, pale, and, typically, a one-woman powerhouse despite her slim frame, favorably contrasted with the seven males on the presidium. People’s Deputy Kostiantyn Sytnyk bent over backwards to give the event some kind of solemn or even historical gloss, trying to generate emotions amid those present. Yet, if the television talk show audience is normally cued to applaud by off-camera assistants, those present at the declaration of the statement on the creation of the National Salvation Forum, a noncompetitive election bloc of the democratic opposition, were openly stimulated to applaud.
But what were the appreciative audience applauding for? Apart from Yuliya Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party, the NSF was also joined by parties headed by Onopenko, Haber, Matviyenko, Lukyanenko, Khmara, and Serhiyenko. There is no need to give the exact names of political parties who joined the bloc — for the simple reason that Mr. Sytnyk, who chaired the meeting, could not remember the names of the member parties himself — and that in the presence of their chairmen who were sitting with him at the table. Not to mention the fact that Stepan Khmara, showing up as he does among the organizers of all new political creations so regularly, has become an inconspicuous part of the interior decor. This must have been the case on this occasion also. Since Ms. Tymoshenko is now in charge of national salvation, something should be done about it. Surprisingly, of the total who declared their intention to engage in salvation in the wintertime, only some few political featherweights have stayed on the list, with the exception of Tymoshenko, of course. Where have Oleksandr Moroz, Taras Chornovil, Taras Stetskiv, Volodymyr Filenko, and many other such influential politicians gone? There is but one reason for their reluctance to join the NSF: they have already jumped on the other bandwagons or are about to do so.
What Yuliya Tymoshenko has got left under her command now hardly exceeds the potential of her own Batkivshchyna Party. As for the slogans for the election campaign of this diehard opponent of “the criminal regime,” their choice is still ahead. In fact, the signing of the declaration to form Tymoshenko’s forum does not commit any of the signatories in any way. Many of us have signed many documents and what of it? I think the most important is the signature you put down in the marriage registration office — Oh! Pardon me, in the Central Election Commission, where political marriages are registered prior to elections. Meanwhile, many political options are in the offing now. Take, for instance, the Ukraine Without Kuchma campaign, which wants to be associated with the Socialist Party led by Oleksandr Moroz, the Ukrainian Right Movement that became an albatross around Yuri Kostenko’s neck, or the For the Truth Committee that went into extinction soon after its March 9 inauguration meeting. The list could be continued.
With regard to the newly created NSF bloc, even its members feel the lack of any real political future for themselves in the forthcoming elections. Six out of seven founders of the bloc have suffered crushing electoral defeats in the past, with the seventh, Batkivshchyna, still to come though that experience. The only reason for reviving the NSF could be that, given the emergence of a broader coalition of which the NSF will become part, the bloc founders will have an advantage in claiming more mandates on the mother-party election roster. This is their only chance.
