Ukraine surprise

Updated Well, yeah, it was a surprise to me, anyway, though not an unpleasant one. Last Saturday I noted that the Ukrainian parliament had adjourned, supposedly for 10 days, without reaching an agreement on electoral changes. The sticking point seemed to be proposed constitutional changes to limit the power of the president. So "barring a surprise or a deal unexpectedly worked out in the next 10 days, the new election will be run under the same rules as the last one," the rules that had lead to charges of fraud.

Well, never underestimate the power of political compromise. Or expected the unexpected. Or whatever other cliche seems appropriate to you. The BBC for December 8 says that

Ukraine's parliament has passed a wide-ranging reform bill, paving the way for a 26 December re-run of the disputed presidential election.

The compromise package includes electoral law changes demanded by the opposition, but also transfers some presidential powers to parliament. ...

The package of measures include:

- Reforming the Central Election Commission, dismissing the chairman and some other members
- Changes designed to reduce possibility of ballot fraud, such as limiting the use of absentee ballots and home voting
- Reduced powers for the president who may now only appoint the prime minister, defence and foreign minister, subject to legislators' approval
- New functions for the regions, designed to ease tensions between the pro-Yushchenko west and pro-Yanukovych east.

Also, the prosecutor general resigned, meeting one of the opposition's demands. But the reaction elsewhere raises a different question.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who has mediated in the crisis, welcomed Wednesday's vote, as did US Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Some, including Moscow, have been claiming that Viktor Yushchenko's election campaign as well as the claims of fraud and even the subsequent public demonstrations in Kiev were orchestrated by the US as a means of extending US influence into Ukraine.

For example, The Nation published in its December 20 issue an article by Jonathan Steele, senior foreign correspondent of the Guardian (UK), who pretty much asserted exactly that.

However Ukraine's crisis is resolved, it is clear that interference by Russia and the United States has been massive. ... In this long-range competition Moscow's partisanship was the more blatant and clumsy....

By contrast, US interference has been subtle and sophisticated, but the degree of American involvement appears to be more comprehensive than anything emanating from Moscow.

Steele describes a "template" for US intrusions into foreign elections which he claims has been used four times previously, with mixed success.

The pattern is that US diplomats orchestrate a campaign of financial help and marketing advice to civil groups, which is described as nonpartisan although in practice it is only put at the service of one side. Using consultants and poll experts, they explain how to choose catchy slogans and punchy logos and organize street comedy and rock concerts to create attractive grassroots campaigns to mobilize young people. Exit polls are a crucial tool. By getting their data on the table as soon as voting ends and being widely disseminated in the opposition media, they create an alleged truth against which the official results are measured. Any divergence of the official count is seen as proof that fraud is under way. Crowds pour into the streets, ready to block public buildings and engage in civil disobedience. This in turn -

Hold it right there. This is where I have real trouble with this kind of analysis: It presents the outbreak of widespread protest, the participation of tens of thousands of people, as little better than a robotic response to US manipulation, as just another step in the campaign to control the election. Later on, he does concede that

[t]he vast bulk of the demonstrators in Kiev are undoubtedly genuine. Their enthusiasm and determination are palpable.

But he makes no allowances for, gives no consideration to, the correctness of their protest, the legitimacy of their claims. That is, the question of whether or not the results of the election actually were the result of fraud doesn't enter the picture. Instead, he says the protestors

do not reflect nationwide sentiment, and the support for Yanukovich in eastern Ukraine is also genuine,

facts which will come as no surprise to anyone who has read a single news article, even in the mainstream media, about the events - and which, frankly, are irrelevant to the issue at hand of legitimate protest versus manipulation.

By basically ignoring fraud, Steele evades that question, by default turning the protestors into a classic example of "useful idiots," those who think they're acting in their own interests but actually are serving someone else's.

I beg to differ. Now, I have little faith in US claims of fraud, but I have some in Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) claims and even more in EU claims. And clearly the claims were credible based not only on the public protests but on the response of the government, which acted like the proverbial kid caught with a hand in the cookie jar and offered no effective rebuttal. (I don't include here the Ukranian supreme court decision, which had not been rendered at the time Steele wrote.)

Some others beg to differ as well. Specifically, those in the streets of Kiev. The Christian Science Monitor for December 8 tells a little:

For more than two weeks, a few thousand students hunkered in a sprawling military-style encampment planted in the heart of Kiev have left the world gasping in wonder and Ukraine's leaders quaking in their boots. ...

The tent city on Kreshatik, Kiev's main avenue, may have looked like a two-week rock festival, with its hordes of unshaven youth, graffiti-covered tents, and constant blaring music. But underneath, it throbbed with serious purpose. The gates were guarded by paramilitaries, who checked everyone's ID. Students inside were sworn to abstain from drugs, alcohol, and sex, and they conducted military-style patrols around the camp's perimeter. They were fed regularly by local volunteers, who brought pots of steaming borsch, loaves of black bread, and platters of steamed potatoes. ...

Most participants insist the "orange revolution" happened spontaneously, drawing on experience of previous anti-Kuchma protest movements, but propelled by outrage over evidence the election had been stolen. "On the night of the elections, people just drifted to the maidan [Kiev's central square], wondering what to do about this terrible fraud that had taken place," says Margarita Razumova, an associate professor of math at Kiev's Shevchenko University. "There was a stage there, and people began getting up and making suggestions. One Rada deputy remembered that there were 1,600 tents left over from [a 2002 protest] and someone was delegated to go and get them. That's how it started."

In fact, for a US-sponsored support movement acting on Yushchenko's behalf, it behaved rather oddly. For example, the Kyiv Post (Ukraine) reported on November 30 that the protestors were furious with Yushchenko for negotiating with the government and threatened to act without him or in spite of him. And once the parliament reached its deal and the tent city housing the protest was to come down in anticipation of the new election, CSM said,

many of those radical, mostly youthful protesters wondered about the fate of their "orange revolution" - part street carnival, part urban revolt - and whether it was ending in victory or defeat. ...

"We've been robbed," says Roman Kolesnyk, from the central Ukrainian region of Zhitomir, who's been in the street camp for two weeks. "We came here to make Yushchenko our president, but now the Rada has just arranged that when Yushchenko wins he'll have no power. He'll be a symbolic leader, like the Queen of England."

That's surely an overstatement, but still rather an odd thing for a supposed American stooge or fool to say. In fact, a fair number of the protestors seem to care less if Yushchenko is pro-West or pro-US or not - what they care about is that he's not in thrall to Moscow. Bogdan Todchuk, a student from Uman, in western Ukraine, was quoted by CSM as saying

his dream is a Ukraine that would finally be free from Russian influence after nearly four centuries of domination. "Now we have a chance to become a truly independent country," he says. "Moscow is trying to build a new empire, but without Ukraine it can't succeed. On the contrary, if we build democracy here, it means Russia will eventually have to become democratic, too."

So did the US meddle in the Ukrainian election? Yes. Did Russia? Yes. Was US meddling more sophisticated? Very likely. Was it "more comprehensive?" Hard to say; it's hard to balance the effect of training and money for political campaigns with Russia's heavy use of state radio and TV to pump for Yanukovich.

But Todchuk's sentiments do reflect a danger here; as Steele notes,

the country is geographically and culturally divided - a recipe for partition or even civil war.

Again, that comes as no surprise to anyone who has read anything about the crisis. But that divide - more accurately described culturally as Russian/Slavic and politically as pro-Russia/anti-Russia rather than pro-Russia/pro-West - is deep and of long standing. It was not created by the election, nor could the result, either result, erase it. Before now, however, one side of that divide has politically dominated the other. Now, that appears to be changing. Steele calls that "playing with fire," and with Russia's mediator, parliamentary speaker Boris Gryzlov, saying

"I am deeply convinced that only Mr Yanukovych's victory will allow Ukraine to remain an integral and united country,"

he may have a point. Certainly, Gryzlov's statement easily can be taken ominously, as a threat to foment separatism in eastern, Russian-speaking Ukraine. But I wonder what Steele would have suggested to the thousands who saw an election being stolen from them. Should they have stood silent and allowed it to happen for the sake of what Steele calls Russia's "legitimate" interest in having a friendly government on its borders? It seems to me his answer is yes.

Well, it's not mine. I don't celebrate electoral meddling or attempts to control elections, no matter who undertakes them. But I do celebrate the power of the people, the power of nonviolent protest to lift dreams and overcome injustice, and it was that power, the genuine outrage of a suppressed people cheated of their rightful victory, that produced what we saw in Kiev, not some PR campaign run out of the halls of Washington. And I tell you truly I don't give a damn about pro-West or pro-Russia and if Viktor Yanukovich had been the loser due to fraud and his supporters had responded by rallying in the same way and had achieved the same result, I would have felt exactly the same way.

The people have the power. It's a pleasure to see them use it.

Updated to make my line of argument clearer.