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Democracy in the UKraine

sleazenation

14:26 / 22.11.04

Democracy looks to be hanging on a knife-edge in the Ukraine at the moment ref hereas the results in the run off poll for the Ukrainian presidential election come in. People have taken to the street amid wiespread reports of intimidation and election fraud from the opposition and international election observers... Its unclear what way this is going to go?

So, what do people think? Are people generally uninterested in the fate of democracy in the Ukraine?

Whale... Whale... Fish!

14:40 / 22.11.04

I was just going to post this.

I would say the fate of democracy in Ukraine is important.

To a certain extent the cold war hasn't ended. And with hard-liners in both the Whitehouse and the Kremlin then Ukraine is of importance. It is an oil producing country and, like Afgahnistan, has pipelines linking it to both the west and east.

sleazenation

15:10 / 22.11.04

It is also on the fringes of an expanding Europe with its borders with Poland and Slovakia as well as it border with Russia. Putin appears keen to retain the strongest possible links with former Soviet republics. But aside from its strategic and mineral value the Ukraine is also significan because of the ticking timebomb it has on its territory - the sarcopagous surounding the remains of reactor 4 in Chernobyl...

Andek Niemand

15:11 / 22.11.04

Ukraine has always been one of the westernmost border of the Russian Empire / USSR (even the name of the country could be freely translated as "Borderland"). Now the Ukraine is independent country, but these elections could push it to go the same way as Belarus has already gone, i.e. Russian semi-satellite with dictatorial government. The other possibility is closer economic ties with EU and USA, perhaps even a membership in the EU some time in the (admittedly very distant) future.
The elections did divide the country even more radically than the recent US elections - only with more fraud (voters given pens with ink that turns later invisible? That was a stroke of evil genius!). Let's hope there won't be violence, and let's hope that the democracy holds in the Ukraine...

Nobody's girl

17:55 / 22.11.04

Go the Ukrainian people! If only we could see similar dissent in the US.

Nobody's girl

13:30 / 23.11.04

Dissent continues across the Ukraine. It's wonderful to see people take responsibility for their democracy. Last night on Newsnight they had one of the independent election observers who told a fantstic story of young women working at the polls defending ballot boxes from skinhead thugs trying to close down the polls. These women placed themselves in front of the boxes as a barrier and drove the thugs out of the polling station.

This made me laugh- "The US state department said it was "deeply concerned" about the election and threatened to review its relations with Ukraine if the government failed to investigate the allegations of election fraud." Oh, the irony. *weeps*

eye landed

12:38 / 26.11.04

clearly a world of disenfranchised voters has had enough of democracy! just because the president is announced after you cast your vote doesnt mean that the one leads to the other.

i dont know if anyone trusts pravdas politics, but they make a point:

It is not the business of Washington or London or Ottawa to decide whether they accept the election results in the Ukraine. It is for the sovereign Ukrainian institutions to solve the process through the proper and existing legislative process, namely an examination of the complaints by the supreme court and the subsequent publishing of the results.

After this, the new President will be announced. It is a simple, clear process and the Ukrainians are capable of solving their own problems without outside interference from the countries who are dying to install Yushchenko, no doubt so that lucrative arms contracts can be delivered to NATO and military bases set up on Russia's borders.

Nobody's girl

13:18 / 26.11.04

Wasn't Pravda the state run paper during the bad old days of the USSR?

Putin is getting pissy and warning off Europe and the US from the Ukraine because he wants it as a client state of Russia. Rigged elections are one of Putin's tricks so I imagine he doesn't think it's such a big deal, but the people of the Ukraine clearly do. I'm glad the EU is getting involved in this.

I think the US should put its own house in order before making noises about not recognising fraudulent elections. People in glass houses and all that. Look at the lesson in democracy the Ukraine is teaching the world though, I love it.

sleazenation

14:28 / 26.11.04

It is perhaps quite a facetious point to make about the irony of Russian premier Vladimir Putin talking about how other countries should not meddle in the affairs of independant states while openly endorsing and recognising on side over the other in the contested elections.

On another level, Russia's statement is an entirely knowing nod to the US lead invasion of and proposed imposition of democracy on an entirely different independant nation, in this case Iraq...

sleazenation

14:34 / 26.11.04

On a side note this Wikipedia article suggests, the post-Soviet era Pravda has a somewhat complicated history...

modern maenad

11:38 / 27.11.04

Small comment - since independence from former USSR Ukrainians have dropped the 'the' from their country's title, and would prefer us to talk about 'Ukraine'instead of 'the Ukraine'(I only know this after being corrected by Ukrainian friends).

sleazenation

12:25 / 27.11.04

D'oh - I know how annoyed I get when people still insist on talking about Czechoslovakia, usually when referring to the modern Czech Republic. I will endevour to do better in the future.

On the plus side - Ukranian MPs reject election result.

bjacques

10:12 / 29.11.04

The Dutch go with Czechia, so I'll go with that because I'm to lazy to say "The Czech Republic." But I'm making a real effort not to call the U.S. "America" and trying to remind people that America is two continents with a bit in the middle.

sleazenation

12:21 / 11.12.04

If we are going to get really picky then we shouldn't us US either since it is a term that could be equally applied to the United States of Central America, a short-lived union of central American states from the early 19th century...

In other news there is now apparently conclusive medical evidence that Yushchenko was indeed poisoned by dioxins... intensifying the speculation that there was an attempt to poison him prior to the election.

sleazenation

13:02 / 11.12.04

Details here.

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