BRAMA, April 6, 2010, 9:00 AM ET
Op-ed
After the Yushchenko Fillip and Hangover
By Boris Danik
In Februry 2010, Viktor Yanukovych of the Party of Regions was
elected the new president of Ukraine.
There may be some uncertainty about the intensity of his pro-Russian
government's pull towards Moscow. But there is little doubt that the
oligarchs – the actual owners of the Party of Regions – would not
resist the temptation to trade away to Moscow the national
independence of Ukraine for personal gain.
The real question is how the Ukrainian resistance will be organized
and directed. It is the question of leadership – usually Ukraine's
Achilles heel.
The genesis of the existing state of affairs – the government in
the hands of the Party of Regions – goes back to the disastrous
choice of "the leader with the legs of clay" [Viktor Yushchenko] who would be trusted to
bring change in the place of the corrupt Kuchma
regime in 2004.
"We did not have anyone else" was the most often heard explanation, while the real organizer – the woman who became the scourge of the regime and was jailed
by Kuchma, and then inspired the crowds at Maidan – was getting a partial
credit and was thought by some to be "overly ambitious". An important part of the story
is that Yulia Tymoshenko, despite her
wealth, with a flare to shake up the system, is an outsider to the
oligarchs' club, to which Yushchenko was connected by his
nomenclatura [the higher officials of the Soviet Union] credentials.
Besides, she is a woman. (Concerning the political attitudes towards
women in Ukraine, the reprobate who publicly denigrated them days
before the balloting, was elected the country's president on February
7, 2010. The year is not a typographical error).
As for "the new emerging leadership", much talked about during the
lengthy election campaign in 2009, it is a motley of light-weights,
minor-leaguers, and posturing middlemen. (The most manicured one was
the money-changer Sergey Tigipko, the epitome
of the burgeoning Russian-speaking big city business icons, grown up from
the susrprise, surprise, nomenclatura roots).
The most appalling was the advocacy of the "Against All" ballot,
coming from the politicians who were thought to have at least some
noodles, or had an axe to grind against Tymoshenko.
The consequences of the Yanukovych win can be so devastating to
Ukraine that the country may again to turn to Tymoshenko in a
national response.
In addition to her lasting role as the standard-bearer of the Orange
Revolution, she must continue to carry the torch of the substance of
Ukraine.
This view of Tymoshenko's leadership role happens to be the same as
that of a prominent group of 14 Ukrainian intellectuals, in an
"Address to the Ukrainian People" a
few days after the February election. Among them are Ivan Drach, Dmytro
Pavlychko, Levko Lukianenko, Ihor Yukhnovskyi, and Bohdan Horyn.
As for the diaspora, its activists of the post-DP generation seem to
be still in a daze from the Yushchenko cocktail, clasping their
medals. They probably would rather see Yulia
go away. Some of them may not realize that the leader is needed not on a
pedestal (already taken by Taras Shevchenko and Lesia Ukrainka), but
someone with live energy, cool head, and savvy.
Dr. Boris Danik
North Caldwell, NJ
April 1, 2010
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