In the clutches of the Family
Some time ago I wrote about Femen, the now famous organization that uses public nudity as a form of political activism. That movement first started in Ukraine. And that's no surprise, because, despite the political swamp that the country has sunken into, the Ukrainians are a pretty active people, politically.
The trouble is, today the life of many of them is full of disappointment and misery. A political octopus called The Family has spread its tentacles throughout Ukrainian politics, and it's sucking out the vital forces of that society.
After the Orange Revolution, as one might have expected, its shiny heroes came to power - the pro-European Viktor Yushchenko became president, and Yulia Tymoschenko became prime minister. But they failed to keep their promise that the country would become a better place economically, socially and morally. At the end of their rule, which came logically and inevitably, the Ukrainians were still one of the poorest people in Europe, with salaries of the 100-euro range or somewhere there. Corruption continued to reign supreme, and no meaningful reforms were ever done.
The staggering incompetence of the new rulers and their inability to deal with the complicated problems put a swift end to the democratic enthusiasm, and led to an election victory of their political foes. In 2010 Viktor Yanukovych was elected president, and he soon did his best to neutralize even the most negligible democratic achievements of his predecessor: the constitutional reform of 2004 was repealed, and the president again granted himself more powers; the freedom of the media was again limited, to reach Soviet-era levels. Just a few days after his election, Yanukovych placed his cronies at all key positions in the judiciary branch of power. The omnipotent State Security services started persecuting both NGOs and journalists alike. Or outright killing them. Anyone who dared to refuse to play by the Family's tune would soon find themselves in the black list, and lose their job.
The Family has been ruling Ukraine these days, and consolidating its domination ever more. Those are relatives, close friends and loyal personal aides to Yanukovych. Just like the oligarchs who are so often featured on the front pages of the Forbes magazine and in the World's Wealthiest Persons list. People like Rinat Akhmetov who has a fortune worth 15.4 billion dollars, or Viktor Pinchuk, the son in law of former president Leonid Kuchma. Oleksandr, Yanukovych's eldest son, is also among Ukraine's wealthiest persons. His business is in construction, energy, mining and banking, and his fortune has swollen to a quarter billion dollars.
But corruption doesn't end there. It spreads into the fake political scene that exists in Ukraine. There are ficititious parties that were created solely to steal votes from the opposition, and thus weaken the influence of the major non-loyalist parties, which is exactly what happened at the latest parliamentary elections in 2012. There are also the so called "administrative resources", whose purpose is to fortify the power of the ruling Party of Regions. People are often advised by their superiors that it's recommendable to vote for that party if they want their communities, their towns and districts to be granted sufficient amounts of these "administrative resources", i.e. money for the construction and maintenance of schools and hospitals, money for culture, for sports and infrastructure.
The Orange Revolution failed to deliver, and because no vacuum could exist in politics for too long, the reactionary forces soon crept back in, and now they rule Ukraine - with all the horrible consequences that come with that. Today, many people in Ukraine associate the term "democracy" with predatory capitalism, with the mass sliding of the majorty into poverty and the simultaneous inexplicable enrichment of others, and with wide-spread corruption. Corruption is everywhere - even if you want to open business as a simple street vendor selling buns at the corner, you'd have to sneeze a bribe off to someone, somewhere in the local authorities. That's where it all begins. And it ends with buying the entire Supreme Court, and all the courts beneath it in the judiciary system, which then obediently pass sentences that barely scratch the surface of the law and serve someone's interests more often than not. Someone from within The Family, of course.
It's a miracle that some people are still kicking and screaming against all this injustice. Like the late journalist Georgiy Gongadze, who got duly killed in 2000. And that's just one of those many cases that the Ukrainian justice prefers not to discuss. A case that has remained unresolved up to this very day, because there are political reasons behind that. Many of the actions of the Ukrainian justice system are openly deemed by the European court of human rights as unjust and arbitrary. And that's no surprise. Because, when you don't have an independent court, anyone could be sentenced for anything, and lose their freedom, their position in society or their property, just because someone up there has said so. If that's not totalitarianism, I don't know what is.
Of course people were fairly disappointed by the failure of the Orange Revolution to deliver the desired results. There were high expectations about that, and they weren't met. Yushchenko's rule didn't lead to any meaningful changes. And now as a consequence, Ukraine is sliding back to its Soviet past. And there are other dangers as well - big rifts creeping through the Ukrainian society like deep cracks on a wall, that threaten to split the country into pieces.
The next couple of years until the 2015 election will be decisive for Ukraine's future. I expect that the pressure of The Family on its remaining opponents, and all other-thinkers as a whole, will be increasing. And if it succeeds, then the future holds nothing good in store for Ukraine.