The Ukrainian crisis: more than it seems

Catholic New Times, Dec 19, 2004

The comedian Dana Carvey first gained fame on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s with his devastating impression of George Bush Sr. With the latter's patented use of chopping movements, Carvey would swing his body to the left--his hands apart--and say, "Gooood;'" then he would repeat the move this time to the right and say, "Baaad."

We would do well to keep this picture in front of us when it comes to understanding recent events in Ukraine.

According to many reports, filtered through tile reflexive historical anti-communism of Western media and the hypocritical noises coining from Washington, one is led to believe that the "commies" are at it again. In high dudgeon, the Bush White House rejected the election, "because it does not meet international standards."

All this from Republicans who gave us the shocking Florida election of 2000 and the still-disputed Ohio election of 2004 which, as in Ukraine, found massive discrepancies between results and exit polls. To simplify matters for us, we have an ideological construct that asks us to believe that the flawed election about to be reprised on Dec. 26 is between "freedom" and "authoritarianism," "democracy" and "dictatorship." Once again we are being invited (Haiti was the last example) to look through the prism of the corporate press which will attempt to simplify matters for us.

Right now, the first candidate for the presidency wearing the black hat, is the dour Prime Minister Viktor Yanuakovich, supported by Russian president Vladimir Putin. Over here ("gooood") is the formerly handsome (perhaps poisoned by the KGB?), the champion of democracy, the other, Viktor Yuschenko. He is supported by western democrats and by all 'freedom loving' peoples.

The reality is much more tangled. As in most power struggles, it would be wise to follow the money.

From all reports, the election was severely compromised, if not stolen. The media, hopelessly biased, has been controlled by President Leonid Kuchma's family. The latter, whose power base is the industrial eastern part of Ukraine, historically more friendly to Russia, wishes to have "the other Viktor" succeed him. The election, like many in the post-Wall years was rigged, although the British Helsinki Watch Group saw as much fraud on the government side as in the more obvious opposition. The long-suffering Ukrainian people, buffeted for too long by the unfriendly winds of history, deserve much better and have risen up to say, "no." This is to be applauded.

The question is whether they will be setting themselves up for a massive letdown at the hands of Viktor Yuschenko, a man whose history is problematic to say the least. As one journalist styled this race, it will be between the "bad" and "the corrupt."

Rigged elections have been a staple in the post-1991 period, Boris Yeltsin's 1996 re-election among them. The West has usually shrugged its shoulders, but now the stakes are higher, given the size of the Ukrainian economy and its contiguity to Russia. An unbiased observer should at first blush, thrill to the resurgence of democratic forces and to the Orange Revolution of Yuschenko supporters and its cheerful and persistent non-violence. As David Nazar, S.J wrote us from the Jesuit apartment "still unfurnished", about 200 metres from Presidential Square, "The spirit is overwhelming peaceful, even joyful despite the drama of the moment."

There can be no doubt that Ukrainians are justly fed up with electoral manipulation and long for transparency and honesty. But before we canonize Viktor Yuschenko, let's dig deeper.

Spontaneous outpourings an "American creation"

The "spontaneous" outpourings in Independence Square are anything but. Ian Traynor in the Guardian (Nov. 26, 2004) describes the present campaign "as an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes." What used to be done clandestinely by the CIA in the post-war years in several European and Third World countries is now done openly. Used to great effect to topple Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia, the clever branding uses symbols like the scarves, the ticking clock signifying the coming end of the Leonid Kuchma regime, street theatre, spray painting and other guerilla tactics. Boil this down to a single word this youth-driven movement is simply called Pora, translated as "high time."

The U.S. State Department is in for about an estimated $14 million dollars. This buys pollsters, consultants, focus groups and exit polls. Joining the government are the National Democratic Institute, the National Republican Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is the civilian arm of the CIA, Freedom House, the IMF and George Soros's Open Society Institute. The "Freedom of Choice" Coalition, the umbrella group for all of the above, also includes Canada's CIDA.

The NED, so concerned about democracy, was up to its neck in trying to topple the popular Venezuelan, democratically-elected Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela. As well, it funded the violent opposition to the recently deposed Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide in February, 2004 in Haiti.