Enough time has passed for the people, who stood up for free choice, freedom of speech, and freedom in this country as a whole, to calm down and relax. Why not relax, if we won what looks like a clear-cut victory? The old system crumbled because it did not share the common human values. Now we must begin building a new system and do it fast. Yet, we have been waiting for a very long time and in vain for the new government to take its first steps. Except for suspending the privatization of strategic facilities, which was decided by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, there have been no cardinal decisions that would demonstrate the new leadership’s immediate concern for the destiny of the common people. The President of Ukraine went on a tour to present the new leadership to the world. That’s a nice thing to do. The world is interested, and President Viktor Yushchenko made it clear that from now on there will be a new situation and new politics in this country. Yet, while the outside world may have accepted and understood this message, Ukrainians are still in the dark about the new leadership’s policies because they were given rather scanty information.
In the first two days in office [then] Acting Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko would ignore people from the mass media who waited impatiently by the entrance to the Cabinet of Ministers. She was probably too busy to find five minutes to say a few words about, say, the agenda of the coming session, etc. This is interesting not so much to journalists (they’ll be none the worse for hanging around on the street) as to the Ukrainian people who want to know their immediate prospects, no less so than the Europeans. Naturally, the days are over when people were dying to appear on television and would seize every opportunity to make passionate appeals to the crowd. This was once important, but now it is equally important that the government be transparent.
Maybe, this is too trivial a thing to worry about, for the people won and that’s that. What contribution did the political forces make to this victory? Let’s start with the situation on the eve of the elections. It was common knowledge that the government would be tapping the administrative resource and rigging as many votes as possible. This was a dangerous attempt to stifle a fledgling democracy and rob Ukraine of a historic chance. But despite this great threat, the political forces that resisted the criminal government failed to form a true alliance. It was only Our Ukraine and BYuT that united around a single presidential candidate. The rest contested the elections on their own and obtained a small number of votes. I don’t mean the “dummy” candidates: those aren’t worth even mentioning. I am very glad that they received an extremely negligible number of votes, which they do not deserve anyway. Oleksandr Moroz, the Socialist leader also had lukewarm support, which was absolutely insufficient for continuing to the second round. Yet, by a weird logic, he became a key figure in the process of distributing portfolios. Inasmuch as Mr. Moroz failed to achieve his presidential ambitions, he should have resigned, as others did, and drawn the right conclusions. We, voters, should have drawn some conclusions, too. A few questions come to mind: why did such a shrewd politician not unite with the rest of the opposition before the first round? Why did he fail to propose important social amendments to the candidate’s program, which he was courteous enough to do well after his debacle? Was the presidency more important than those amendments? Did he realistically assess his chances? Did those with whom he didn’t want to unite realistically assess him after the first round? Moroz not only lost the presidential race but also suffered a moral setback because, I repeat, there was a real THREAT to democracy and human rights, including those of the socialists. Or was this not an argument for them at the time?
I am convinced that rank-and-file socialists like me and many others who filled Independence Square would have opposed vote rigging and the pro- governmental candidate in any case, without any belated demands for privileges. So it was very hypocritical of Moroz to set conditions and secure certain guarantees for himself at that particular juncture under the guise of a people’s defender. What he should have done was just come out and support the people, like Mayor of Kyiv Oleksandr Omelchenko, without any guarantees and at his own risk. This is an attitude worthy of respect, while the Socialist Party’s haggling is shameful.
Nonetheless, the people won a victory. I repeat this just to emphasize the contrast: the people won the victory and then were forgotten because the time came to vie for portfolios. First there were Roman Bezsmertny’s churlish comments on the appointment of Yuliya Tymoshenko as acting prime minister. Then Petro Poroshenko expressed his discontent. Does this mean that the consolidation of revolutionary leaders was just a farce? Isn’t it comical that the date for submitting the cabinet’s composition and program for parliamentary approval was postponed over and over again? On the one hand, this may mean a serious approach to the problem and the need for more time to reach a decision. This is normal. But, on the other hand, didn’t they understand at the very outset that this was a serious matter? Would it not have been better if, instead of fixing and then postponing the date, they had taken a month or two for their deliberations? A serious problem requires a serious attitude. The people could have waited.
The worst thing is that normal work was stalled not by the gravity of the problem but by the distribution of portfolios. Bargaining is still going on. I can imagine Yanukovych’s followers grinning with pleasure, for they warned about their opponents’ true interests. Now the Socialists come with a signed agreement whereby one-sixth of the cabinet portfolios “belong” to them. Naturally, in caring for the people, they don’t forget to press this demand. Ostensibly worried over the social clauses in the cabinet’s program, they still lay claim for some reason to the post of not the minister for social policies but the ministers for fuel and energy, finance, and the interior. In principle it is possible to find a link between these posts and social policies, but is also obvious that one can monitor cabinet’s performance even when an individual is a member not of cabinet but parliament. For example, the latter recently passed a vote of no confidence in the previous cabinet, which means that the government should resign within a specified time frame. After all, there is a parliamentary committee in charge of every sector of public life. For some reason, nobody cares about this. Wrangling is going on for portfolios. There is no place for ordinary people in this squabbling. So for whom did they win a victory?
I want the President of Ukraine to establish a streamlined system of power as soon as possible, so that posts will be assumed not through behind-the- scenes games but through a selection of experts and competent persons who have not been tarnished by corruption. I want this system to work at last, because the common people are waiting for this, the very people who carried out the revolution and are now forgotten.
