Friday, October 26, 2012

Will observers pull their punches to prevent Ukraine's eastward tilt?


European leaders have quite correctly declared Ukraine's further European integration to be dependent on how Sunday's parliamentary elections are conducted.

Some are worried that if observers deem Sunday's elections to be unsatisfactory, Ukraine may as a result turn eastward and enter into a customs union with three authoritarian countries - Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

In order to prevent this, they predict: "the official evaluation [of the elections] by EU observers, the OSCE and the Council of Europe will be very cautious."

This is bollocks. The job of official observers is to give neither cautious, nor harsh assessments, but to observe and scrutinise, report on what they see, and provide a conclusion. This is what they will hopefully do.

Western politicians should not respond to Yanukovych's playing of he Russia card: "Go easy on us, or we will turn east" - it is all bluff. Russia will not give Yanukovych anything...even for something. E.g. the Kharkiv Accords agreement has become a taboo subject during this election campaign. Ukraine gave away one of it's crown jewels - the best naval port in the Black sea, and still did not receive a fair gas price from Russia - Ukraine is still paying far more for Russian gas than other customers.

Whether or not Sunday's elections are declared satisfactory on not by independent observers will make little difference to Yanukovych's steamroller. His priority is to maximise the wealth of his family and maximise political power, by whatever means necessary, in order they remain 'on top of the muck-heap'.

Yanukovych said in Kharkiv today:  "The fewer prompters [commentators] who [try to] teach us how to live in our house there are, I have in mind from the outside, the better and more comfortable we will feel in our house, in Ukraine.." Is he suffering from pluralis maiestatis?

p.s. Vice Premier of Ukraine Serhiy Tihipko thinks their could be a national referendum on Ukraine joining either the Customs Union or the European Union. We will see in the weeks to come whether the country will have any choice, or whether there is any point in such a referendum.

2 comments:

elmer said...

with their ridiculous attempt at "triangulation" according to the "Ukrainian third way", yanusvoloch and his idiotic lunatic sovok mafia bring to mind a Woody Allen line.

Playing a robber, as he points a gun to his own head, the robber says:

"Give me the money, or the hostage gets it."

yanusvoloch and his psychotic mafia are holding a gun to their own head and holding themselves hostage, and threatening to "shoot the hostage" - themselves - unless they get their own way.

I also wanted to bring up something really funny -

Livy Bereh (The Left Bank) takes video excerpts from the political talk shows and posts them on its web site (Sonya Koshkina is the very fine journalist there - she is the one who was threatened with criminal charges by a member of Parliament, Landik, who is the father of the rat bastard son who beat up a young woman in a restaurant and pulled her around the restaurant by her hair).

At any rate, there is Symonenko, the leader of the communists - and somehow in the conversation he came to be espousing ---- get this ---- Christian principles.

"Christian communism"j - what a hoot.

Here is the link:

http://lb.ua/news/2012/10/27/176177_tv_poslednie_predvibornie_batalii.html


Klitchko was also on (there is a video excerpt), and he made eminent sense. It almost looked like zArazov, and old commie sovok mafioso and the current "Prime Minister," was ready to vote for Klitchko!

elmer said...

Why should they pull their punches?

Here's a video of the Party of Regions ordering a certain percentage of the vote (it's not a new trick in Zookraine):

http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/10/27/6975586/

It is characterized as a "request" and not a "command"

What's the difference?