Are there limits on prestige?

The Mercedes S-500 recently purchased by Naftohaz Ukrainy has been offered for public sale, Interfax-Ukraine quotes the company’s PR department as saying. This move comes days after President Yushchenko ordered Naftohaz chief Oleksiy Ivchenko to sell his new car. Ukraine’s leader also said he would be insisting on a moratorium on such things as the purchase of luxury cars and apartments by government officials. Earlier, the media reported that the company had bought Ivchenko a new Mercedes because he “is used to driving only in the latest makes.” What should the limits of prestige be for those in power? Two commentators give their answers below.

Yevhen HOLOVAKHA, Ph.D.; deputy director of the Institute of Sociology at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine:

“In civilized countries, people care about their prestige in a different way. Yes, there is such a category as ‘social prestige,’ but it is not achieved the way it is in this country. In civilized countries, excessive consumerist initiative is regarded as the hallmark of a not very decent civil servant. I had hoped that in the last 15 years bureaucrats would at last ‘be sated.’

But the facts show that we still do not have the correct idea of respect for an individual in society. Unfortunately, as long as these tendencies prevail, we will have a concomitantly ineffective government. Sociology has a theory of post- material values, which states that there are two tiers of values. The first tier, material values, means that the individual is basically oriented toward material objects of consumption. This is typical of underdeveloped democracies. Well- developed democracies mostly consist of post-materialists, who place spiritual values above material ones. Perhaps they are already ‘well-fed’ and hence take a greater interest in spiritual values.

Unfortunately, most Ukrainians are materialists, and bureaucrats form the overwhelming majority. They believe that the more material values they amass, the higher their prestige will be. Thing will only change when our bureaucrats understand that joining Europe means joining a certain system of values, not territory. Only then will we have more post- materialists. Incidentally, Western bureaucrats do not have staff cars. They buy them with their own money and drive them. Naturally, a rich person can afford to buy an expensive car, but there are not so many rich bureaucrats in Europe, and they do not want to buy at the state’s expense.”

Andriy KURKOV, writer:

“Prestige is limited by government funds, because a bureaucrat buys things with public money, not his own. For the sake of comparison, go to London and see what government officials are driving. Our middle-level bureaucrats have more expensive cars than Prime Minister Tony Blair. He has a Jaguar that costs an average of 50,000 dollars. The aspirations of Ukrainian bureaucrats for prestige can be attributed to the ‘Africa syndrome,’ or the syndrome of a rich government in a poor country, when there is not a single concept of national development, but power is regarded as a workplace that enables you to earn a terrific salary and live high off the hog.

This syndrome arises primarily because of a lack of culture. There are people who like things that glitter and those who do not. People who understand that non- glittery things may be costlier than those that glitter are not vulnerable to this syndrome. Those who regard external prestige as a decisive factor are people without a cultural foundation.

I think it is practically impossible to overcome this ‘malady.’ If an individual has contracted it, he or she will only shake it off under coercion. Who can take up this role? There will be no changes as long as there is a legislature like our Verkhovna Rada, which has passed a law on the lifelong subsidization of MPs. These people go there to roll in clover free of charge their entire lifetime. Who can call for the introduction of measures that will curb bureaucratic appetites? — an emerging civil society, the mass media, and simply people who are free of this virus and whose opinion is being heeded can.