This photo by Mykola Tymchenko was printed on Den/The Day’s front pages one year ago, on May 26, in the editorial titled “The year of President Petro Poroshenko: what has changed?” However, it is not the photo itself that is interesting, nor is the text: it is the fate of this issue. Several hundreds of copies were unceremoniously “arrested” by the president’s bodyguards.
It happened at the Ivan Franko Theater, where the ceremony of awarding the best connoisseurs of the Ukrainian language (winners of the Petro Yatsyk international competition) was held. For many years our newspaper has been sponsoring this philanthropic competition, even in the troubled times (suffice it to remember the infamous “Tabachnyk period”). And that issue of Den, carrying the story of the competitions origin and achievements, was to have become a special, additional bonus for each laureate. But it never did. Actually, the participants did get their copies, but only after the ceremony in the theater, in which Petro Poroshenko also took part: the president’s (rather anonymous) Protocol Service and the president’s bodyguards (even more anonymous) did not like this photo on the front page as inappropriate (or just the opposite: very appropriate?).
We never learned the reasons, because these gentlemen would not condescend to providing the organizers of the competition with any articulate explanations. We at Den/The Day suggested that the president did not know about the backstage (literally) feats of his men (see The Day’s issue No.32 or Den’s issue No.89 of May 26, 2015). Yet the writer and historian of literature, executive director of the League of Ukrainian Philanthropists (the organization holding the competition), could not withhold his indignation: “This is administrative idiocy… They do the president a disservice. Now [I am] forced to say publicly that he has a failed team.” Failed, but certainly adulatory. It is very handy if one wants to build an efficient “power vertical.” Probably, this is all that is good about it. The rest is bad. Certainly for the country, but also for the president in general.
