Well, Crap 

It seems I forgot to spit over my shoulder three times against bad luck after I wrote this:

There's a major bright spot in this lack of non-gassified news, though. What we aren't hearing about are accusations of media crackdowns and use of administrative resources that came up so often in the last election... All the folks who took part in the ORev protests can take heart: whatever problems there have been in Ukraine since January 2006, their efforts won them not only one fair election, but if things continue on like this, a second one as well.

And now I have noticed irksome examples of both. Foreign Notes brought my attention to a newspaper office burning in L'viv and a journalist beating in Donetsk (there was another firebombing claim last fall from a Ukrainian tabloid, not terribly well sorted out). Also Regions of Ukriane broke into a school to get one of their deputies un-fired.

And for the administrative resource, I have political commentary from one of my favorite sources, my mother-in-law: 

…Today the president of our academy came to visit us at the institute and campaign for BYT (Block of Yulia Tymoshenko). Our academy president wants to keep his seat for more than one term, that's why he decided to go into politics and chose support to support this bloc. He seems pretty sure that Tymoshenko will be the new Prime Minister.

So they go around all the institutions belonging to our system and "persuade" people to become BYT party members. Well, people here got used to this kind of requests from higher echelons, that's why they spend all their efforts to ensure the president's support by making their subordinates enter BYT. (e.g. one girl is working on her thesis and she was afraid that if she didn't become a BYT it would reflect badly on her chances. "It's a lucky thing the ballot is still secret" she told mom.)

The election campaign is getting heated up. Tymoshenko has chosen a tactic – sidle up to the electorate: a minimum of the external advertising, very few billboards (it's true), no TV advertising, not a word of advertising on Radio Era either. Instead, you get roundtables to help ordinary people to solve some problems, like "have your been granted the right pension?", etc. They also help orphanages, schools, kindergartens and individual pensioners. So they're at least somewhat useful.

The Regions guys, on the other hand, have been trying to give everybody the shakes: they blather on in sepulchral voices that "Alles Kaput": the economy, social status and international status. And when the proffessor comes, everything will be go back to the good old days...

Man I hope they put together a functioning judiciary sometime soon, so some of these problems can actually get dealt with. A little more refugee friendliness would be nice, too.

Other Bits 

In good news: Ukraine's finally gotten market economy status from the US. 

In entertainment news: Vera Serduchka (as always). Serduchka is officially backing the Green Party. I'm sure the similarity of their political views is obvious.

OK I Admit It

Not a terribly insightful entry today. As penance, here are a few Donetsk pictures.