Some laugh and sing. Others cry and cry.
Whether spontaneous or staged, tears put a human face on a politician. The Hillary syndrome has now spread to Ukraine. Tears have been shed in our presidential campaign.
Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn routinely blasts the oligarchs and claims being cash-strapped.
That’s despite privatizing 600 sq m of taxpayer-paid real estate and having a daughter who owns a luxury boutique and a brand new $100K car.
You’d think that makes him a thick-skinned materialist. Hell no!
When a fellow Lytvynite presented him with a rushnyk sewn by her mother, the gift moved the man to tears.
Presidential candidate Volodmyr Lytvyn: In...[fights back tears, falls short of igniting a standing ovation]...in Polissya...in a back-of-beyond Polissya village...[fights back tears, ignites a full-blown standing ovation]...my parents brought me into this world.
Yanukovych found himself in a similar situation during his tour of western Ukraine, where his opponents vastly outnumber his supporters.
An elderly woman mounts the stage, empathizes with Yanukovych’s childhood of growing up without a mother, gives him a vyshyvanka and wishes him the best.
Presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych: [smiles amid applause, crosses himself, bows repeatedly, thanks the woman, kisses her hands, ignites a standing ovation]: Thanks a lot, Hanna Mykhailivna! I’m deeply moved. I’m very grateful. In the area, in the region, in the land where I grew up, there’s a hu...huge industry. It was there...that I grew up, it was there that I was taught to work, to manage production, the economy. I grew up all by myself among people. Indeed, down there...nobody wore vyshyvankas...[gets sentimental]...and I’ve never worn it in my life. But I...I promise you that I will definitely wear it on holidays. [ignites a standing ovation, steps down, visibly tearful]
It’s the same tough guy who sells his apartment for Hr. 33,416,350 but reports Hr. 2,674,910 on his tax returns.
If you have a problem with that, you can sue him. So he says.
Videos uploaded/embedded from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSCu2z_rgYM
http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/142467.html
Original sources:
http://5.ua
http://www.vgolos.com.ua
7 comments:
Who will cry first when the IMF holds off disbursement of the 4th tranche of its loan under the Stand-By Arrangement?
It's nice that the old lady gave him the shirt - maybe Yanuk will finally figure out that he lives in Ukraine, not roosha.
Yanuk never held up the embroidered shirt (вишиванка) to show the people what he got!
Is everyone from Donbass poor and orphaned?
A while back, Akhmetov, reputedly now worth well over $10 billion, started spewing about how he grew up poor, etc.
Now Yanuk comes forth and talks about growing up "poor" and, apparently, without a mother.
Lytvyn also talked about his mother.
The problem is, all of these jerks in or behind politics, Kuchma, Pinchuk, etc., apparently use that as an excuse to rob and pillage their way to enormous wealth in Ukraine - with a vengeance.
And still have the audacity to try to hide their wealth - as in the case of Yanuk and his 400-acre estate, once the property of the government - Mezhihirya - in which ownership is hidden through a complex set of corporations, one of them affiliated with his son, and, of all things, a fishing club.
Are the morons in Ukraine really that stupid?
They clap like seals for a thief and a thug, a product of the Kuchma political machine, complete with Yanuk's son sitting in the Parliament with no qualifications, and for no good reason.
Yanuk and his political machine must be handing out a lot of money in Lviv.
I guess growing up poor in Ukraine, whether in Donbass or elsewhere, is a handy excuse for robbing your way to wealth through government.
I think my family has less than $100K income all together, so it is quite shameful that she has a more expensive car and then probably she is not living in a 50 square meter apartment.
Hello Taras:
What is a vyshyvanka?
By the way, I hope you have a wonderful 2010!
John,
You can count me out. I definitely won’t cry:)
But she will cry. She wants as much debt as she can get — with 0 accountability — so she gets elected and we foot the bill.
Elmer,
Enjoy this Pinchuk-loving FT piece, written by a Ukrainian Canadian who shamelessly promotes Pinchuk’s billgatesization.
After reading Supper with the FT: Victor Pinchuk, some FT readers may think his fortune comes from a kick-ass garage start-up like Microsoft.
No, it doesn’t. It comes from his father-in-law’s blowout garage sale of Ukraine’s dirt-cheap assets, spiced up by dirt-cheap labor and dirt-cheap natural resources.
Do the math:
Kryvorizhstal, Kuchma’s price: $800M (2004); market price (2005): $4.8B.
No wonder Ukraine leads corruption indexes and lags economic ones.
No wonder Ukraine’s nominal GDP per capita doesn’t exceed $4,000.
No wonder Ukraine’s population has declined by 7,000,000 since 1992.
Ukraine picked up a much heavier tab for oligarchs like Pinchuk than the tab picked by this Ukrainian Canadian FT reporter who dined with him. Shame on you, Chrystia Freeland!
One more thing: Has anyone heard Pinchuk speak Ukrainian? I haven’t. Russian, yes; English, yes; Ukrainian, no.
Ropi,
You should marry Lytvyn’s daughter and move to Ukraine:)
Gabriela,
Muchas gracias! Feliz Ano Nuevo:)!
As Elmer pointed out, vyshyvanka is a traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirt.
Well, even Pinchuk uses the poverty line in the FT article ("this closet is bigger than the apartment I grew up in").
Yep, life sure is "lucky" for Pinchuk - cheat on your wife in order to marry Kuchma's daughter, score a few huge privatization deals, and collect really, really bad art by Damien Hirst.
Oh, yeah - don't forget the heavy, heavy Jewish connection - Soros, Greenspan, and all the rooshan oligarchs that are joined at the hip with Ukrainian oligarchs.
Every time a cow leaves a "cow-pie" in the field, the cow makes better art than what Pinchuk is collecting.
Yep, life is good - it's good to be a Jewish Ukrainian thieving oligarch in Ukraine.
I still remember the videos of the Paul McCartney concert you posted, Taras, the one funded by Pinchuk.
But there was a price for admission - on the big screen, his father-in-law, Kuchma, against whose Kuchmism (no freedom of press, and plenty of falsified elections and crooked privatization deals) lumbered on and on about how he "loved" the Beatles.
The kids in the crowd, quite rightly, raised their hands and extended their middle fingers.
That's the kind of free speech I like, that's the kind of "freedom of speech" I love when a thug criminal like Kuchma is talking.
I don't care about his personal life. All I know is his oligarch life is no good for Ukraine.
Let me quote from Yushchenko’s 2004 presidential debate statements:
Нам можуть говорити, що мiнiмальну зарплату 237 з початку року не можна внести, тому що для цього не вистачає 2 млрд. В той же день, або за пiв-дня, крадеться "Криворiжсталь" партнером Вiктора Федоровича i зятем Кучми. I рiзниця мiж кращою цiною, яку давали покупцi, i гiршою цiною складає 5 млрд. Так у мене запитання, що у нас не вистачає, щоб вчитель, медик був iз зарплатою i достойною зарплатою. Грошей чи чогось iншого?
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