Recently this country came close to seeing the answer to the key question that will determine, to a large extent, the political trend of 2012: Will there be a united opposition? Will the latter draw up a consolidated parliamentary election list? Is it able to ensure an effective change of power?
I doubt it. Quite a predictable answer, which one should take without too many sentiments but with a deep understanding, came up last week. It will be recalled that, in an interview with Den, the chairman of Our Ukraine’s political council, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko directly urged the Front of Changes leader Arsenii Yatseniuk to be number-one on the opposition’s consolidated election list. There has been no answer from Mr. Yatseniuk for almost a week. And last Thursday Arsenii Yatseniuk and Viacheslav Kyrylenko announced that the parties Front of Changes and For Ukraine had merged. “The two parties are also calling upon other opposition parties and politicians to seek ways to avoid mutual struggle and join forces in the elections for the sake of defeating the common enemy, i.e., the current government,” says the joint opposition agreement signed by the two leaders.
Nor does it seem that Yulia Tymoshenko’s call to draw up a consolidated list and go to the elections as a united opposition is of any help. Mr. Yatseniuk showed rather an interesting reaction to The Day’s request to comment on
Ms. Tymoshenko’s letter. I must say we expected a more meaningful answer from a prospective opposition leader on such a socially vital issue. “The opposition is doing its best to have Yulia Tymoshenko released from jail and heading her party’s list in the 2012 parliamentary elections,” the Front of Changes press ser-vice quotes him as saying. In all probability, Mr. Yatseniuk’s chief message lay in the key phrase – “her party’s list.”
So the idea of some oppositionists to go to the polls in several columns, lambasted by Nalyvaichenko in the abovementioned interview, seems to be materializing. Columns “against the common enemy” are already being formed. How many of them will there be? Three? Four? Ten? This will perhaps depend on the amount of common sense that still remains in the oppositionists, the power of the political self-preservation instinct, and the adroitness of the oppositionists’ opponents, i.e., the government. It is crystal clear that there will be more than one column. The notorious Committee for Resisting Dictatorship is in fact folding up, having performed only one of its functions – raising an informational hullabaloo. And Nalyvaichenko’s recent call to urgently convene this committee looks like a desperate cry into the backs of those who have already begun to win electoral points, leaving Our Ukraine and other not so po-werful forces behind the 5-percent barrier and making them ponder over how to overcome this barrier.
All this bustle, so typical of national democratic forces, put forward, somewhat unexpectedly and, at the same time, quite predictably (with due account of the previous history of “relations” between a politician and a poetess, described below), quite a serious problem which has been hovering over Ukrainian politicians perhaps since the late 1980s. In a letter sent through her lawyer Serhii Vlasenko, Yulia Tymoshenko noted: “It would be a good idea to publicize the consolidated list of this team [the opposition. – Ed.] well in advance for a nationwide debate and ask a highly-moral and patriotic person of the level of Lina Kostenko [! – Ed.] to top this list.” This proposal triggered a wave of comments and emotions in the Internet.
We have actually got down to an issue that could in principle explain the whole background of not only the present-day opposition but also the entire Ukrainian politics as such.
Indeed, why has there never been a Ukrainian politician of the level of Lina Kostenko or Ivan Dziuba? Why have the oppositionists felt the dire need of a person like this only now that they have lost and are running the risk of losing still more? Maybe, because Tymoshenko – with her deep-seated political intuition – is aware of a societal demand for a qualitatively different policy? Maybe, because society (please do not think I am against all) is now prepared to understand that there is no choice but there is a dubious alternative between some post-clan political groupings? Yes, they have somewhat altered their faces and have a bit different rhetoric, but the money (since the recent times of inter-clan struggle) and the rules still remain the same. In a recent commentary to The Day, philosopher Mykhailo Minakov very vividly painted the Ukrainian societal picture: “If you abide by the rules, you will be losing.” Does the opposition aim to change this? Judging by how fast rules change and agreements are breached, everything suits the oppositionists now.
What are Tymoshenko and her supporters suggesting? Are they suggesting that an intellectual and a moral authority top all this set of social anti-rules and come to power again?
The Day has already quoted the Russian political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky. But this phrase is so profound that it will be no crime to say it again: “Before changing the government, you should change the opposition.”
Interestingly, the influential German newspaper Die Welt has interpreted Tymoshenko’s letter as an invitation to… Vitali Klitschko to lead the opposition. “In the opinion of analysts, the call is, first of all, addressed to the opposition politician and the world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko whose party has received so far no proposals for cooperation,” the German newspaper writes.
There is some sense in this. In any case, Vitali has at least two essential advantages over his opposition colleagues: his prestige in the world and the money he has personally and publicly earned. These advantages make it possible for him to be independent – a chance he must not miss.
“All of them – those who have been in power before and those who wield it now – have already had time and opportunities to fulfill their promises,” Vitali said last November to The Day. “These politicians have long been holding top offices, and they are doing their utmost to stay on. So we should not flatter ourselves that this political class can change itself or anything in this country. We must change the system and the people in power.” It is good if these words are really a firm conviction. It will be still better if Vitali, who, let us hope, has a knack for politics, not only for sport, will resist anti-rules and dissociate himself from the dubious political legacy.
By all accounts, everybody would benefit from this. For the one who will rally the opposition will be a true leader, while the “columns” will always remain open to bargaining.
OPINION
PARAPHRASING CAMUS: AN INTELLECTUAL IS ANALYSIS AND CONFRONTATION
Oxana PACHLOVSKA, political writer, professor at the Roman University of La Sapienza:
“An intellectual is a sovereign individual. An intellectual’s responsible POSITION is OPPOSITION to any government. For he or she is, by nature of their mentality, a critical substance.
“In a modern democratic society, politicians are involved in politics and intellectuals in the certain forms of their activity. Intellectuals cannot retake the job of politicians and vice versa. At the same time, intellectuals can play a major role in assessing and correcting political processes: suffice it to recall such figures as Hannah Arendt, Karl Popper, Albert Camus, or Pier Paolo Pasolini.
“It is a different situation in totalitarian and post-totalitarian societies, where all political functions and structures are deformed. In this case the intellectual IS OBLIGED to be part of the political process. But how? The metaphor of an intellectual is Dr. Rieux in Camus’s novel The Plague: he treats the sick and shapes the attitude of an intellectual in an immortal soul: the main thing is not to side with the plague. Vaclav Havel, to whom the world is paying the last respects, is the example of an intellectual-turned-politician. But, in reality, he devoted himself to the IDEA OF FREEDOM and the IDEA OF EUROPE rather that to politics. The same applies to the totalitarian-era Polish intellectuals, such as Jerzy Giedroyc, Jacek Kuron, Adam Michnik, Czeslaw Milosz, Bronislaw Geremek, and many others: they became part of the political class that fought for freedom and Europe. The scale of their thinking embraced the problems of their country as well as those of Europe and the rest of the world. This is why such intellectuals, politicians, and, hence, countries have won. What emerged victorious is the Polish (Czech, Lithuanian, Estonian…) democratic opposition, where politicians and intellectuals can rally together because freedom and Europe became a unifying idea for them, which overshadowed local problems and debates.
“By contrast with Poland, the Czech Republic, and other East Slavic neighbors, the Ukrainian democratic opposition has lost, for it failed to be the carrier of the following formula: THE STRUGGLE FOR A FREE UKRAINE IS THE STRUGGLE FOR A EUROPEAN UKRAINE. Power in Ukraine belongs to anti-European forces. So it is obvious that only the concept and strategy of Euro-integration can be the basic ideology for a united opposition. Who has it? The NU-NS which in fact brought the Party of Regions to power? The BYuT defectors who drove into politics on Tymoshenko’s bandwagon and are now writing Jesuitical pasquinades against her? Or Svoboda, some of whose members are opposing NATO and the EU as vehemently as the Communists? Or some other parties always provoke embarrassing questions about the sources of their funding? Most of the opposition parties do have personalities who raise no doubts about their integrity. But these personalities are in the minority.
“The Ukrainian democratic opposition has lost because, like the politicians now in power, it has never placed Ukraine above anything else. Whoever has displayed blind ambitions, striven for protagonism, generated or supported the ‘against-all’ idea, or become part of shady schemes is a political provocateur and a worthless person. No self-respectful intellectual will be able to come closer to the world of politics as long as those guilty of this situation are hanging around the corridors of power.
“The failure of Ukraine’s European prospects and a crackdown on Tymoshenko and other oppositionists has a cause-effect relationship. Europe has imposed a terrible verdict on today’s Ukraine, which is obvious in Kyiv, Brussels, Washington, and Moscow. Due to their political ignorance and greed, the current leadership and opposition collaborationists have lost the battle on all fronts. They have turned Yulia Tymoshenko from a politician who has her own evolutions and mistakes into a miniature queen on a huge ‘geopolitical chessboard,’ to quote Zbigniew Brzezinski, who influences Ukraine’s choice of civilization. So the opposition does have a leader with whom Europe will willingly sign documents on integration. All the opposition has to do is overcome the stagnation of ideas and bring its leader back to active political life, while intellectuals have enough work to do in the decades ahead. Moreover, that there are very few intellectuals, as well as politicians, capable of working for a European Ukraine.
“In 1991 and 2004 Ukrainian democratic politicians should have heeded the alarming forecasts of intellectuals both in and out of Ukraine. Camus warned that plague is especially dangerous when the epidemic seems to have passed over. People are feasting and public hygiene stations are vacationing, while viruses are lying in wait for a good occasion. I do not think that, having said this, Camus was to become the leader of a political force. He had already been one even without being appointed. He was not so much a political leader as just a writer in his country and the world, a writer who MANAGED TO WRITE.
“And let society and politicians MANAGE TO READ.”
