Ukraine elections IV

Nov. 30 - Nine days! Ukrainians continue to remain vigilant in an awesome display of idealism and determination. The massive numbers of people who continue to block government buildings in frigid weather is humbling and one has to ask oneself would I be out there given the discomfort much less the risks if we lose? Naturally I say Yes! but I'm not actually there and, accustomed as I am to the leniency of North America when it comes to tolerating demonstrations, confronting tanks on the streets of my hometown is just not really an expectation.

[The more time goes by, the more I doubt such will happen in Kiev mostly because the whole world is watching, but it was certainly in the back of my mind in the early days after the election and it is unlikely that those who gathered outside the government buildings were unaware of the danger.]

Latest news is that the opposition has cancelled talks and, I'm surmising, have wisely chosen to place their confidence in the hands of those who have vowed to not stop blocking the buildings until their demands are met.

According to CNN, these demands are:

The government must admit that the election results were falsified.

Yanukovych's government and the Central Election Commission must step down.

Some action must be taken against three regional governors who threatened to take steps toward autonomy in the wake of the dispute.

Interior Minister Nikolai Bilokon, who they believe was part of the effort to manipulate the election, must be fired.

John O'Sullivan makes some interesting points in his Chicago Sun-Times column More than presidency at stake in Ukraine (link via Instapundit) in which he looks at the divided nature of Ukraine and the surprisingly clumsy role played by Russian President Putin as well as something I hadn't even considered: the losing role of French President Chirac and others.

A third loser is French President Jacques Chirac and those European leaders who want the European Union to be an anti-American counterweight to America. International crises involving Russia tend to remind Europeans that the United States remains a very valuable ally in a dangerous and unpredictable world. Fantasies of a superpower Europe seem insubstantial delusions by comparison with this tested alliance.

I'm not sure about that, and I certainly haven't noticed such in Toronto (although East European immigrants here are often sympathetic to the US.) I've been pretty focused on what this upsurge means to the people of Ukraine without consideration of the role their struggle plays in a wider geopolitical struggle for power so leave such matters to real pundits.

I don't expect everyone to take our path but merely support their right to chose their own paths, and it appears that such is exactly what they are doing; that is the defintion of freedom.

Posted by: Debbye at 12:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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