Jail Yard March
// Things Are Different in Kiev This Time
The fate of the 2004 presidential elections in Ukraine was decided on the street. Or, more exactly, on Kiev's central square. But calling people to the square for the parliamentary elections in 2006, as the pro-presidential faction Our Ukraine tried to do last spring, was absurd. In the end, Our Ukraine came in a distant third in the elections. And the largest bloc of seats in the fifth Verkhovnya Rada went to the Party of the Regions, which had been conspicuously absent from the street demonstrations. The Party of the Regions was also helped by spats within the Orange camp and the call to Orange activists to take over the square, which by that time had already passed into history.
Yesterday I set off to have a look at how things are going for the supporters of the ruling coalition as they organized a "white-and-blue" camp on the square that they hoped would put a halt to President Yushchenko's decree dissolving the Verkhovyna Rada. I remembered how, on November 22, 2004, the day after the second round of voting in the presidential elections, I came out of the metro at 11 o'clock in the morning and set off along Institutskaya Street down towards Independence Square. When I saw a 20,000-strong crowd, dappled with orange scarves, roiling on the square at that early hour, I understood that Viktor Yushchenko had won.
Yesterday I retraced my steps from two years ago. At the entrance to the parliament building I saw the tail of a long column of Party of the Regions supporters shuffling off in the direction of the square. By their clothing and modest behavior, it was immediately clear that they had just arrived from the provinces. Looking alternately around and then back at their feet, they moved silently. In fact, they weren't even moving so much as being led. This procession of Viktor Yanukovych's supporters was reminiscent of a march of prisoners in a jail yard.
The group of Party of the Regions supporters arrived at their destination, which had been cleared in advance of opposition activists Yulia Tymoshenko, Our Ukraine leader Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, and former Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko, a popular politician. These three had gotten what they wanted the day before: a presidential decree dissolving the parliament. So, after appearing there late the night before to celebrate the decisiveness of Viktor Yuchschenko, they no longer needed the square yesterday. Without them, Independence Square, full of supporters of the parliamentary coalition, looked yesterday like a trap, a boiling kettle.
But there will be no Stalingrad. Instead, there will be elections. According to Ukrainian law, if early elections take place the list of candidates for the Verkhovnya Rada must be given to the Central Elections Committee no later than 40 days before the vote – in this case, before April 17.
Over the next two weeks, the parties must hold meetings, choose possible partners for their elections campaigns, and choose their candidates. And then the people will have their say. So all of the recent pronouncements from Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and Speaker of Parliament Oleksandr Moroz, like those of the ministers and deputies from their coalition, from this point on will be considered nothing more than pre-election rhetoric.
Alexander Vinogradov, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Kommersant Ukraine
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 04, 2007
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