Not that I'm new to ☠ligarch Entertainmen☦, but this one caught me by surprise as I was walking downtown last Saturday.
And you know what they call it? “Майданc” (“Maidan’s”) It’s a carnival-like dance contest that brings together the cities of Ukraine. Last Saturday’s contestants: Odesa, Kirovohrad and Kharkiv.
Looking at all that Soviet memorabilia in motion, I had a couple of flashbacks.
April 1989. I’m one of the top three students to be promoted to the rank of pioneer (Soviet boy scout). In second grade, a whole grade ahead of the curve. We’re rock stars!
The “rite of passage” took place in the Lenin Museum, just a few blocks from here. In just a few years the USSR would be history.
And what about these kids? How old are they? What the hell are they doing?
If you're an oligarch and you want this for your kids, check out these tutorials.
Yanukovych: Because the rule of law...uh...abiding...by the laws of Ukraine is compulsory for all. Today...in Kyiv, they’re already setting up, on the very spot where the protesters’ tents stood yesterday...uh...today, they’re already setting up the New Year...[struggles with Ukrainian, settles for Russian]...YOLKA [tree], and very-very soon people will start celebrating the New Year.
Independence Day 2010 combined Soviet-style officialdom with sexy overtures.
A background check revealed that Alyona Fesunenko, one of the performers at Independence Square, had made a name for herself as Ukraine’s PMOY 2005.
With passion in her voice, Alyona recited “Love Ukraine” (1944) by Volodymyr Sosyura, a patriotic poem condemned as nationalistic by many at the time.
This lays to rest a Soviet woman's famous quote from a 1986 US-USSR teleconference: “In the USSR, there is no sex, but there is love.” The guys abovereally love Ukraine! From the bottom of their pockets.
FEMEN sexed up the day at a separate event, in what looked like a rip-off of Putin’s bike ride.
Placed on hair-trigger alert to protect stabilnist, police intervened quickly and booked the ladies one more time.
Using their bodies as letters, over 100 activists said ТАК (yes) to freedom of assembly and НІ (no) to legislation meant to restrict it.
The proposed bill would require protesters to post a 4-day notice prior to holding a protest.
Hundreds rallied against the bill Monday in major cities across Ukraine.
They named the rally “Вихід з демократії. Пароль: 2450.” (“Exiting Democracy. Password: 2450.”), referring to the bill’s registration number.
In Kyiv, the rally proceeded from Maidan Nezalezhnosti to the Verkhovna Rada and ended with the announcement that hearings will be postponed until next week.
If you’re a fan of FEMEN, stay tuned.
At a small but vocal rally, Sasha and Inna, the two vinok-clad ladies, protested passionately and often stole the spotlight.(Just as they did last Friday on Inter.)
We made the Top 3 grain exporters, leaving Russia far behind.
We did this and that.
We lost 12% of our GDP. No, you don’t want to mention that if you’re a PM who’s running for president.
PM/presidential candidate Tymoshenko: One more thing, my darlings: We can and should take pride in the fact that it was in 2009 that more babies were born in Ukraine than ever since independence! And it’s your joint effort! [giggles] Our joint effort! Because if the country starts setting records in giving birth to Ukrainians, it means we’re really doing fine.
So delayed childbearing means *we’re really doing fine*?
How many more delayed births does it take to stem depopulation and reproduce the almost 7 million people we’ve lost?
She puts on another vyshyvanka, wallows in people's pain and admits no wrongdoing. She sounds like an advance-fee fraud letter.
The Cinderella of the Orange Revolution wants a second chance. Wait, a third one! Oh, no, a fourth one! (depending on how many times you voted for her)
She waxes inspirational and nostalgic; She talks about faith and freedom; She says she knows people who spoke Ukrainian for the first time on Maidan; She says she knows people who sang the Ukrainian anthem with their hands over their hearts for the first time; (She definitely doesn’t know anyone who’d laugh at Putin’s jokes degrading Ukraine’s statehood); She reaches across the aisle to Yanukovych supporters who, too, craved freedom; She blames those who betrayed the Orange Revolution; (She doesn’t blame herself); She tells us not to feel sorry for the Orange Revolution; She promises to do it all over again if she has to; She recalls Natalia Dmytruk, police cadets, volunteers and two young protesters, from Donetsk and Lviv, who got married during the Orange Revolution; She makes fun of Yanukovych’s jail record and likens him to a bruised and battered dog named Lucky; She reminds us that freedom is worth the fight; She says there will be no going back to the oligarch past if she wins; She won’t let it happen.
Her real selling point doesn’t imitate Yushchenko’s 2004 slogans: “The rich will help the poor!” and “The bandits will be sitting in jail!” (Hahaha!) Nor does it emulate her party’s 2006 and 2007 slogans: “Justice does exist. It’s worth the fight!” and “She did it back then. She’ll do it again!” (Really?)
To counter these voter doubts, she armed herself with a panoply of endorsers and performers. On Saturday, they royally descended on Maidan, the heart of Orange Revolution.
Coming from all walks of life that lead to Tymoshenko, dignitary after dignitary waxed eloquent and lavished accolades on their president of choice. A cornucopia of promises, memories and sales pitches flooded a Maidanful of people, many of whom had traveled to Kyiv as party delegates by bus or train from all over Ukraine.
(Tymoshenko’s main rival had unleashed his yanucopia on Friday, delivering a just-name-it-and-claim-it stump speech at a Party of Regions convention. One can compare Yushchenko’s and Tymoshenko’s 2004 and 2009 open-air stump speeches to Yanukovych’s 2004 and 2009 members-only ones.)
Endorser:former foreign affairs minister Borys Tarasyuk
Ukraine Will Win!
Tymoshenko collected two endorsements from the European People’s Party (EPP): from Wilfried Martens and Antonio Lopez-Isturiz.
Endorser: Ruslana
Endorser: Borys Paton, 91, chairman of the National Academy of Sciences
The funniest one came from our former president Leonid Kravchuk — an ardent endorser of Yanukovych in 2004! For some reason, Tymoshenko decided that the man who had pissed away our nuclear arsenal, presided over hyperinflation and endorsed Yanukovych would be an asset to her campaign.
Endorser: former president Leonid Kravchuk
Finally, the Queen of the Night steals the show, in a vyshyvanka coat. Her speech, emotionally charged and long-winded, electrifies but a few souls.
At the opening, she credits herself with the blessings of Pope Benedict XVI and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. A prayer, sung by Nina Matviyenko, follows.
After praying, Tymoshenko pays tribute to Ukraine’s heroes, thanks her team, recalls the Orange Revolution and calls for unity.
Then, she blasts Yushchenko and his hobbies. Later, she blasts Yanukovych and his oligarchs. She blames obstruction and corruption. She blasts and blames this and that. She forgets about her aborted grand coalition plans. She sidesteps her Draconian gas deal with Russia. She keeps mum on the Pedogate scandal. She pretends there’s no corruption in her own camp.
What struck me as novel amid these otherwise routine rhetorical escapades was her likening disenchanted voters to special needs people who still can win. Like Olena Yurkovska, the Ukrainian Paralympic biathlon champion who won four gold medals in Turin in 2006. What a nice analogy and pep talk! Coach Tymoshenko dissociates herself from her job, associates me with her failures and inspires me to push the envelope. (And push yet another ballot down her ballot box!)
It’s like saying, “Yeah, I screwed up. I didn’t deliver. But it’s all your fault anyway so shut up and take courage! Your disenchantment cripples you. Just vote for me one more time and you’ll be all you can be!”
She launches into an us-against-them diatribe and proceeds with a massive deja-vu stereotype-busting attack: Don’t think that all politicians are alike. They're not. She’s not like them! She’s moral and can be trusted!
To inject the masses with her “She’s Ukraine!” slogan, she levels with them:
Small business owners — fed up with red tape and bribery (while running her own small business in Dnipropetrovsk, she had to deal with bureaucracy and extortion);
Homebuyers — hard-hit by dollar-denominated mortgage loans (she hates the exchange rate);
Students — suffering from joblessness and homelessness (born and bred in a khrushchyovka, she knows how it feels; while a student, she jockeyed tires “twice my height” at night and, if elected, will make housing affordable, at low interest rates.)
What did I miss? Oh, yeah, she also talked about how she:
Reined in the energy and payments crises as vice premier in 2000-2001 crisis;
Ended up in jail for upsetting Kuchma’s cronies;
Kicked RosUkrEnergo’s and Vanco’s asses;
Boosted coal reserves;
Doesn’t care about approval ratings;
Cares about stabilnist only;
Loves the Ukrainian language;
Will feed the world with Ukrainian agriculture;
Will make Ukraine the most energy-efficient country in the world by relying on coal;
Will make Ukraine a full-cycle nuclear fuel state (no kidding, Uncle Sam!)
Will offer 10-year tax breaks to renewable energy producers;
Will restore justice;
Will build a Europe within Ukraine and maintain friendly relations with neighbors;
Will protect Ukraine’s national interests;
Will deliver everything she promised;
Expects winning the respect of future generations;
Has a dream like Martin Luther King’s;
And guess what? Her dream is to make other peoples’ dreams come true. (With other people’s money?)
She misspoke on the energy issue: “And everyone should know that if we burn coal instead of gas, we’ll triple the cost of heating and hot water for the people.”
She also burnished her idea of “dictatorship,” couching it in Putin’s “dictatorship of law” terminology.
PM Yulia Tymoshenko [final words]: And that’s why this election is a struggle for our Ukraine’ preservation, and not a struggle between politicians. And I know that it is Ukraine that will win this presidential election and it is she that will gain what she’s been waiting for for hundreds of years. And we all will be serving this right and truthful cause. And that’s why I want God to be with Ukraine. I want God to be with every one of you. And that’s precisely why, with great pride, I say: Glory to Ukraine!
I didn’t stay for the concert. I went home, along with throngs of other rally-goers. While not depressed, we were nowhere as cheerful as five years ago. Nobody had the heart to scream “Ty-mo-shen-ko!” again and again like we screamed “Yush-chen-ko!”
