Prostitution Forever
March 25, 2009 – 8:46 amI had thought I had seen it all in the last 4 years since the Orange Revolution, but this has to top it. Taras Chornovil, Olexksandr Moroz, Serhiy Holovatiy and many others moved effortlessly from the orange to the Regions camp.
Trust, loyalty, honesty, and integrity are simply absent in post-Soviet totalitarian Ukraine and we should take this reality into account when dealing with Ukraine. BYuT deputy Viktor Ukolov entitled his blog “Prostitution Forever” http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/ukolov/
Ihor Popov, head of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine – an excellent election monitoring NGO which was funded for many years by the National Democratic Institute (linked to the US Democratic Party) – was appointed deputy head of the presidential secretariat yesterday (http://www.president.gov.ua/news/13260.html).
Why anybody would want to join the discredited secretariat headed by an incompetent and corrupt “crisis manager” (Viktor Baloga) with only 9 months to go before the elections (when Viktor Yushchenko has only 2-3% support) is baffling. Unless, that is, his election skills are to be used by the presidential secretariat to influence the upcoming vote either for Yushchenko (if he decides to stand) or for Arseniy Yatseniuk (if Yushchenko does not stand which will lead him to support Yatseniuk as the best candidate to undermine Yulia Tymoshenko’s support in orange western and central Ukraine).
Popov would have known about the pending appointment when he went on record on March 18 saying that the Ternopil by-elections were held in a ‘free’ manner without violations. BYuT, which dropped from 1st place in 2007 to 5th place in these elections with 8%, has contested the results. Presidential secretariat head Viktor Baloga’s United Center came in a surprising second with 14% after pre-election polls gave it a low 4%. Regions came in a very surprising third with 10% (United Centre is the only wing of Our Ukraine-People’s Self Defence that supports a grand coalition). BYuT alleges that administrative resources were used to increase the vote for United Centre and Regions and to lower the vote for BYuT. Undoubtedly administrative resources were used (the Ternopil governor is a member of United Center) but, of course, BYuT also made two important strategic mistakes: voting for the election and then voting to cancel it, and deciding to not participate in the election campaign.