You should make that title, "Still Waiting for Yuschenko" as a better pun off of "Waiting for Godot", the tragicomedy about the political messiah that never comes...

dlw

Cartoons! Whee!

Allow me to give a heartfelt recommendation for "Yak kozaky w futbol hraly"!:
ftp://ftp.uar.net/pub/music/Ukrainian/!%C2i%E4%E5%EE/Kozaky/yak_kozaky_v_football_graly.avi

It's my favorite of the Soviet cartoons I've seen, plus it's particularly Ukrainian in content, and also you still get it even if you only speak english.

For the serious cartoon (or even movie) fan:
http://multiki.arjlover.net/

If the news reports coming out are correct, maybe Yush isn't such a bad poker player after all.
I'm sorta reading tea leaves here, but this is what I see coming down the pike at 3 p.m. EST in the US (10 p.m. Kyiv):
--OU joins the coalition
--Commies are out
--Yulia is the loyal opp
--Yanu is PM

The beauty of this is that if the communists really are out, then OU can hold the string to bring down Yanu's gov't if he gets out of hand. By signing the agreement, Yanu has to live up to it and its provisions to move ahead with Euro integration, keep the language issue as is, and even be open to NATO??!!??
Of course there is always the potential of double-crossing in Ukraine (thanks a lot, Mr. Moroz). But if Yanu tries a trick - getting in as PM, then re-aligning with the Commies and revoking what he agreed to - then OU can joint BYuT and walk out, provoking a new election, and a chance to let the voters see who was lying.

It really must be over: (from channel five)

"About a third of Yanukovych supporters packed their tents and left. They have also taken down their stage in front of the Verkhovna Rada. The number of BYuT supporters is also decreasing. Neother the Regions nor BYut staged pickets on Friday. The “Pora” party was silent as well, but still active. They held a silent vigl in their effort to convince the president to dissolve parliament. They joined hands creating a human chain that stretched from the Maidan to the President's Secretariat. Ruslan Kotsuba, leader of the "Pora" tent camp said that the orange fairy tale has come to an end.

dlw: sounds like a good idea. I did. :)

R. Smith: what a great link. My personal favorite is "Na Krayu Zemley" the seven-minute short. It is just fabulous. I saw it in the US once and loved it and was happy to see it again. Tough call for me on the Kozaki. I think the first and second installments are loads better than anything that came later, but I have a tough time choosing between the two. The second one was funnier, but the first one had much more interesting (and unusual) animation.

I think, on balance, I'd have to say I liked the first one a hair better for this reason.

WRY: Yeah, he demanded a continued course to NATO! That takes some brass. Well, I'm not so sure what credit I'd give him as a poker player, but I was very happy to see him try to play a little hardball for a change.

The situation looks great, except I think Yushchenko is bluffing. Yanukovych may be dealing with polarized voters on the language issue, but on NATO, he's pretty much got the country behind him. Personally I'd be happy to see the issue get sidelined for a while, so the cost/benefits can be explained to people before the decisions are made.

By demanding continued course to NATO, along with the rest of stuff... to be honest, I think Yushchenko is overestimating his leverage here. Yanukovych could cheerfully say. "I call. Show me what you got." Or, to put it more in political words: "I don't want to change our NATO policy, [he'll pick that issue before the others, because he's got a bigger majority], so you either let me have my way, or go ahead and have your new election." Yushchenko might do it, but not like that's going to scare Yanukovych--the man's on his way to gaining seats.

Therefore, while my congratulations go out to Yushchenko for at least using what power he's got to try and gain some advantage, he's going to need to maintain that resolve all the way through negotiations (and be willing to compromise) if he's to make of the grand coalition something more than a capitulation.

Then we hope the new post-orange Ukraine is resilient enough to make it through an "anti-crisis" coalition corruption onslaught.

Just added a simplified version of these thoughts in an update to the entry.

Thots?

Quite the collection of posters, too.
If any slipped through the cracks, they might be over at
http://sovmusic.ru/p_list.php

To the brink:

From Regions Saturday (July 29):

"The position taken during the negotiations by "Our Ukraine" testifies that the political party which received less than 14 percent of votes at the elections, and possesses only 80 seats in the parliament, has set itself an aim of imposing the possible wide-format coalition its own ideology and directing the majority. And blunt blackmailing along with the intimidation of conducting pre-term elections were used as the means of pressure.
...
"A condition has been put to the Party of Regions, the elections' winner, to actually deny its program which has been supported by the majority of voters.
Profoundly humiliating offers were accompanied by a propaganda campaign in the media, which is offending to us and our coalition partners.
...
"We would like to remind V.Yushchenko who has repeatedly sworn allegiance to the democracy, the words of the third President of the USA, father of the American constitution, Thomas Jefferson: '... a nation ceases to be republican only when the will of the majority ceases to be the law.'
"The anti-crisis coalition, which consists of 242 MPs and was created in full accordance with the Constitution of Ukraine and the Rules of the Verkhovna Rada, is ready to form a professional coalition government. There are three days left for the President to execute his constitutional duty of introducing Viktor Yanukovich's candidature to the parliament.
"Any unconstitutional actions would only increase political crisis in the country. And this would completely be the President's of Ukraine responsibility."

Now we see what could be worse that a Yanu govt: A vengeful Yanu govt.
If Yushie tries to call new elections now I predict things are going to get ugly real fast.

full statement at:

http://www.ya2006.com.ua/eng/press-center/news/44cb87356ad77

Carrot:

Leader of Party of Regions shares aspirations of the Ukraine’s President to stabilize situation in Ukraine.
“We are sure that offering the roundtable the President of Ukraine aspired to stabilization of the political situation in Ukraine. And we support this. We consider that political forces always must aspire to stabilization of political situation,” Yanukovich said on the press conference."

Stick:

In case if the candidature of Victor Yanukovich for the post of Prime Minister of Ukraine is not nominated, Party of Regions will initiate presidential impeachment, as PR member Taras Chornovil declares, press office of the party reports.
“Negotiations with Our Ukraine are failing and Party of Regions becomes angry. Position of the party is strict. If Victor Yanukovich is not nominated for the post of PM, there will be early parliamentary elections, on which Party of Regions may gain 50% of votes plus 10% of bonus. We can take 300 votes in the parliament and initiate presidential impeachment in accordance with Constitution,” Chornovil declared.

This is of human interest about a reporter who went undercover with an International Marriage Brokers organization in Ukraine.

http://www.harpers.org/AForeignAffair.html

This is of more general interest, as it points out how extreme political partisans selectively read their opponent and their candidates statements.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/30/AR2006073000579.html?

It's something that needs to be more generally recognized and thought about, as it affects how we interact with our opponents and others.

dlw

This is off topic, but there is a global petition to call for a ceasefire in the middle east.
http://www.ceasefirecampaign.org/

I hear popular support in Israel is declining for the war and who knows this might help things to move ahead...

dlw

Perhaps premature, but assuming new elections, what do folks think about it?

--Do the issues really matter? Or will we see an exact same division of the country into two camps as before and as in the last presidential election? This could be good for the Orange forces.

--What if Yanu campaigns against NATO, which a clear majority appears to reject? Will that make a difference?

--What about the language issue? Will Ukrainophones rally behind Orange if Regions takes a strong pro-Russian stand? Between "Ukrainian sole language" and "Two official languages," which is the election winner?

--Will Yush and Yulia bury the hatchet for good?

--Will Moroz, Commies get past the 3 percent mark?

--Will there be massive fraud in the east? If that happens and the west is tired and apathetic, look out.

I think perhaps new elections are the only way to go now. I say that reluctantly because I see great danger in a divided country. But Yanu's promise to put in Russian as the second language would be the death knell of Ukrain's aspirations to encourage its own culture. I have nothing against Russians and Russia: but I'm told that it is a complete joke that Russians in Ukraine are in any way oppressed and unable to speak their language. In fact, isn't most of the media and books etc. all in Russian?

If there are new elections, a lot is going to depend on Yusch deciding to be a leader....

dlw

Looks like Yushchenko has chosen to do nothing....does he not realise that the longer this goes on the smaller the chance his party will ever win a seat in the Rada becomes?

This doesn't seem to surrender much on the language issue (from ITAR-TASS):

"Ukraine's new Universal, or the national unity charter ... envisions the use of Ukrainian as the only state language and the language for official communications in all spheres of social and public life.
" 'Each citizen is guaranteed the right to freely use Russian and/or any other native language in any situation as need be in line with the Ukrainian Constitution and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages,' the document says."

This seems like more or less a restatement of what the constitution already said, or am I missing something?

What it means is that Ukrainian will continue being the only national official language. But it says nothing about the burning question of whether Russian can an official regional language. This seems to me to give the PR an escape route to support the right of regions to declare official languages, taking the issue off the national level.

NATO drive is a dead duck. Basically, they agree to continue current policy, but Ukraine can only join NATO after successful referendum. At least for now, it is hard to see how such a referendum would pass, so Ukraine in NATO is a non-starter.

About EU and CES, they agree to pursue both. This is a win for Yanu. Everybody pretty much agrees on EU, but the Orangers had been resisting the CES.

Interesting comments from Yanu at

http://www.ya2006.com.ua/eng/press-center/news/44d08bd82e998/

On federalism:

"It is possible that in the future, in some far prospect we shall consider a federalization opportunity. But this is out of question at the given stage of the Ukrainian statehood development. This is currently irrelevant for Ukraine and nobody puts the federalization issue on the agenda."

And language:
" ... we consider that in the state there is a necessity to develop the Ukrainian language, especially in the eastern and southern regions.
An intelligent, well-balanced program which gradually, step by step would introduce the Ukrainian language into the life of citizens is needed. This program would bring a lot of advantages. And the opposite – impudent, aggressive, reckless ukrainization creating many problems in the daily life of our fellow countrymen harms the development of the Ukrainian language, more than any idea of the Russian language as a second official one."

I call it federalism, you call it regionalism...The very next paragraph on the link you pointed says:
"We may speak about a local self-government reform, about decentralization based on the European experience of regionalization. And we are convinced that development of regional cooperation will be of an advantage, will improve economic and political situation in Ukraine. Such approaches will help to realize the constitutional reform and to create effective system of power in our state."

Decentralization based on European experience is vague enough that anything can come out of it. If we look at the power devolution in Spain for example, regions have acquired more power than most federal entities in de jure federations.

Regarding the language issue, I still say that PR is making a climbdown at the national level, but will have to throw some bones to its constituency by allowing Russian to be official in regions. That's all the talk about 'minority languages'. The PR has been claiming that Russian should be considered a minority language according to European conventions and using this to make Russian official in several regions. All that I see is that PR is dropping the issue from the national level, since it had no chance of changing the constitution anyway.