Last week Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko laid before the public the result of investigations into the pervious government of Viktor Yanukovych. Needless to say, this involved the disclosure of financial irregularities featuring quite astronomical sums, all of which was pinned squarely on the broader shoulders of Mr. Yanukovych and his inner circle. This sort of thing might have been a political bombshell in many European countries, provoking angry demands for a full and independent investigation and even a ministerial resignation or two. In today’s Ukraine, Mrs. Tymoshenko’s allegations barely registered a ripple.
Transparency without accountability
The sad but inescapable truth is that the general public has been overfed on a diet of political transparency without accountability and is no longer listening. Ukrainians have seen the dirty inner workings of the political beast laid before our very eyes in the accusations and counter-accusations made on a daily basis for the best part of three and a half years. They have noted that no matter how large and damaging the accusation is, somebody is ever punished or made to face justice.
Despite the avalanche of allegations to have been given a public airing since the press was freed up in 2004, there has not been a single conviction of a high-ranking government official from any of the parties. Instead of the promised march towards responsible government we have descended into the realms of chaos, where political rivals can toss allegations around without any fear that it might result in any real consequences. This has produced a parliament which not even its own members seem to take seriously, a government which can plausibly claim that is not being allowed to do its job, and a President who snipes and criticises the work of his own political allies while brokering backroom deals with his supposed ideological enemies.
Everyone is guilty, nobody should be punished
The central tenet of Ukrainian chaos theory states that as everybody is guilty, nobody should be punished. This core belief underpins the political landscape and gives rise to a culture of dishonesty which flies in the face of the country’s stated democratic ambitions and saps the will of the general public to play along with the charade. Tired of voting for apparent ideals only to find their elected representatives paying scant attention to the wishes of the democratic majority, Ukrainians are turning away from the country’s democratic soap opera in droves.
The seeds for this state of affairs were first planted at the height of the Orange Revolution, when President Viktor Yushchenko appears to have cut a secret immunity deal with the leaders of the old regime as part of the compromise brokered to end the political crisis and bring him to power. Mr. Yushchenko subsequently went public with his commitment to Ukrainian chaos theory, offering immunity from arrest for all those accused of involvement in the great 2004 election fraud as part of the deal he struck to guarantee his nominee was voted in as PM in autumn 2005. In other words, the very man who inspired the nation with calls of ‘Bandits to Prison,” during the Orange Revolution is directly responsible for allowing a culture of unaccountability to take hold. Once it became clear that there would be no wave of arrests in the wake of the Orange victory, the old guard slowly recovered their swagger and returned to the fray to the extent that by late 2005 it was said that many Party of Regions deputies had ironically adopted the Orange Revolution’s most famous slogan: “Together we are many. We cannot be defeated!”
Scandal-proof society
As a result of this lack of accountability, modern Ukraine has become a scandal-proof society. Nobody pays any attention anymore to the crimes of the authorities, no matter how grandiose they may be. Despite being substantially freed from the straightjacket of state censorship since the Orange Revolution, the Ukrainian media has yet to become an effective tool for social justice. The cult of the talk show has created a illusion of transparency, but in reality the new-found dominance of the format has come to overwhelm the arena to such an extent that mere words now float aimlessly about on the air, hopelessly over-exposed and denuded of their potency.
Meanwhile, parliamentarians have become engaged in a desperate struggle to invent new gimmicks with which to attract the weary public’s wavering attention. Early attempts involving megaphones and mass brawls have long since given way to giant balloons and extended blockades. People whose job it is to run the country and act as it democratic guardians have spent the entire year engaged in the antics of the primary school sandpit. When the speaker of the house, the beleaguered Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said last week that running parliament was like keeping a pig farm, nobody took much notice. As far as most people were concerned, Mr. Yatsenyuk was merely stating the obvious. We have now reached a new nadir in Ukrainian chaos theory, with a minority coalition on the verge of capitulation and a fresh round of elections on the horizon. The very credibility of Ukraine’s EU ambitions is under threat, but unless the population witnesses some sort of accountability introduced into the government of the country it is hard to see how anyone could take a new vote seriously.
