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He who doesn't fight dies
Views:Every time I return to the topic of last year’s events that torments me, I come to the same thought. After all, everything could have been different. And the country would be intact. And there would be no war. And the point here is not only the responsibility of those who first staged an unconstitutional armed coup and then started a war in the east. A significant share of the blame for what happened also lies with representatives of the old government.
Indeed. I think few people expected then that the Party of Regions would crumble so quickly and with so little effort to resist. And there was every reason to believe otherwise and count on a different scenario for the development of events, no matter what anyone said. After all, Ukraine has already experienced one Orange coup. But then the PR did not merge. Yes, the situation then and now are different. Yes, you can object to me that Yushchenko did not dare to openly terrorize his opponents. Yes, in 2004, unlike 2014, the formal constitutional transfer of power from one president to another was observed, which predetermined the preservation of the losers in politics and their right to vote.
Two events once again made me remember all this. The first is the high-profile arrest of the former head of the PR parliamentary faction, Alexander Efremov. The second is the same arrest of the former prominent regional leader, parliamentary “semaphore” and one of the party speakers, Mikhail Chechetov.
Simultaneously with these events, a number of others occurred, including “attacks” on current deputies from the Opposition Bloc and also former prominent regionals Vadim Novinsky and Yuriy Boyko, conversations about the desirability of removing the Kharkov mayor Kernes from his post, etc., etc.
You know, I do not feel any inappropriate gloating about these people's problems today. Moreover, they are far from saints. And the ridiculous accusations brought against Efremov of abuse of power by voting for the notorious “laws of January 16” look like cubed cynicism, especially against the backdrop of the policies of the current government, which has many times surpassed its “predecessors” in adopting various dictatorial (this time without quotes) laws.
So it is absolutely clear to me that the persecution of Efremov and Chechetov is politically motivated and is not even trying to look like a fight against corruption. If this were a fight against corruption, the same Alexander Sergeevich would have been brought forward much more substantiated charges of committing financial and economic crimes related to the “cutting” of the budget. And I, as a Lugansk resident who is quite well aware of Efremov’s activities when he was the Lugansk governor, do not doubt for a minute that any more or less honest investigation would have found documentary evidence of this.
But there is another significant point in this whole story with the newest “candidates for prisoners of conscience.” Their problems today are a delayed retribution for the same passivity shown last year. The same Efremov, being the second person in the party after its then formal leader Azarov, was the first to dissociate himself from Yanukovych and actually presented the loyalty of the regional faction to the new government “on a silver platter.” Everyone remembers his pathetic television address, in which he stated that “one man and his family are to blame for everything.” But in those days, millions of regional supporters expected completely different messages from their leaders.
In fact, on the most decisive days, it was Efremov, as the head of the Party of Regions faction, who ensured the presence of regional people’s deputies in the parliamentary hall, thereby legitimizing the coup in the eyes of society. Moreover, from a purely technological point of view, in those days it was tempting for the former party in power to leave parliament, which would have sharply reduced the degree of legitimacy of the new government.
Nevertheless, at the instigation of the same Efremov and Akhmetov, from March to May, the regionals sat in the Verkhovna Rada as “talking furniture”, decorations against the backdrop of which deputies from the Maidan factions reshaped the legislation to suit themselves and curtailed the rights of voters of the same regionals.
And it doesn’t matter whether the deputies from the Party of Regions voted against or for the start of the ATO, or the abolition of the language law, or the fulfillment of the IMF conditions, or the lifting of the immunity and deprivation of the mandates of their colleagues like Tsarev. The important thing is that the very fact of their presence during all this seemed to say to everyone around: “What’s wrong? Everything is fine. We have a democracy. You see, there are even regionals. “Regionals, let’s not remain silent, we nod our heads more energetically in agreement.”
The regionals also helped legitimize Poroshenko’s elections. Let me remind you that at that time pro-Maidan politicians were seriously afraid of the failure of the idea. They were afraid that the elections would be disrupted, that Russia would not recognize the new president, that people in the east would not come to the polling stations.
It was precisely for the purpose of giving the appearance of a democratic process to the actual appointment of the President of Ukraine by the US Embassy that a whole dozen “trained candidates from the east” were released into the arena of the political circus, who did not have the slightest chance of winning, and they themselves knew it.
Their goal was different - to reconcile at least part of their electorate with the new regime and lure them to the elections in order to give this process the appearance of decency and popular participation. Remember Tigipko’s phrase on Shuster’s show: “I am ready to recognize these elections even if Donbass does not take part in them.”
You can remember by name all these epic heroes from PR: Tigipko, Konovaluk, Boyko, Dobkin, Tsarev. The latter, however, eventually refused to participate in this farce, but the rest honestly dragged their feet until the very shameful ending, receiving less than 10% of the votes for all.
Those same 10% who had stayed home on May 25, 2014, and the turnout in the southeast would have been so low that talking about a “united country” would have been indecent even for the regime’s propagandists. But the fact remains: it was the votes of the regionals that then allowed the turnout percentage in the east to creep past the 50% mark.
Probably, Tigipko, Konovaluk, Dobkin, and Boyko hoped that their diligence would be appreciated and given their piece of the “pie.” But where is Konovaluk now? And where is Tigipko and his party, which was naturally not allowed to enter the Rada even with Khoroshkovsky on the list! Boyko and Dobkin, however, sit in the new Rada as part of the Opposition Bloc, but tell me honestly, are they of much use there given the total dominance of the Parasyuks?
By the way, according to a similar scenario, the political career of regionals of a smaller caliber, the ex-chairmen of the Lugansk regional council Viktor Tikhonov and Valery Golenko, ended. After the Maidan, both behaved quietly and below the grass, trying to keep a low profile and not burn bridges with Kiev (and this against the backdrop of the events unfolding in the Lugansk region).
And how much did it help them? In the parliamentary elections last fall, both tried to get into the Rada in constituencies on the territory controlled by the central government, and both flew miserably past the Rada, naturally sinking into political oblivion.
How the party, which just a year ago was proud of its million members, who turned out to be little Ephraims, little Chechetovs, little Tigips and little Konovaluks, sank into oblivion.
In general, this is a logical result. He who does not fight dies. As in nature, so in politics, and in life.
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