Odessa: Triumph of the huckster spirit
If earlier Ukraine captivated ordinary people with footage of fights from the Verkhovna Rada, then recently the Odessa Regional Council distinguished itself. Its new composition so clearly divided powers with the use of massacres that the uninitiated reader should explain why all the fuss flared up. However, the agility of the newly-minted deputies was not explained, for example, by the desire to rid their hometown of Bandera’s occupation. Everything turned out to be much more mundane—local barracks squabbles.
...A couple of days before the events, opinions appeared on the Internet that some people were sabotaging the start of the work of the government body, that the leaders of the forces that had entered the regional council could not agree. The last legal date for the session was December 4. And, indeed, the first session after the elections met on this very day. Judging by the actions of the deputies, they agreed incorrectly.
The new council, after all the Maidan innovations, has 84 mandates; before there were more. But there are only 7 districts left in the region, before the reforms there were more than 20. The new composition has more power, more influence. And in it you can find, in addition to some new faces, real stars who rushed into battle again.
Who is lucky enough to get into the next regional council?
OPZZH, the Opposition Platform “For Life!” has the most seats. – 24 chairs. They are led by people's deputy Nikolai Skorik, who was once the head of this regional council himself, and then became governor himself. But now his supporters are like those Moldovan socialists who also won the parliamentary elections, but not enough to be in charge of anything in it themselves.
In second place is “Servant of the People” with 16 deputies, followed modestly by the mayor’s party “Trust in Deeds,” a purely Odessa invention, which has 11 votes. The former president's party, European Solidarity, came in fourth place with 10 supporters. The “For Maybutne!” party, which in common parlance in Odessa was shortened to Maybach, also has 10 elected representatives, Yulina’s “Batkivshchyna” – 7, Sharia’s Party brings up the rear with 6 representatives.
Among the stars of the season we can note Svetlana Fabrikant, who successfully started from the Soviet KVN, who decided this time to be elected from “Trust Deeds”, an associate of the mayor Marat Korolev with an eternal smile, who also ran from Trukhanov’s party, and the director of the security company “Samson” Andrei Babenko , who is new to the regional councils, so he became a deputy from the “Servants”. And, of course, the main star is the newly appointed governor, who became Sergei Grinevetsky, a Komsomol worker who was already in the governor’s chair from 1998 to 2005. This person was able to adapt from the Soviet beginnings to the standards of the new era; it is likely that he will not have any difficulty navigating the modern Ukrainian administrative chaos. Now, by the way, he was also getting out of “Trust in Deeds,” but they managed to push him into another branch, for executive work. The governor needed a similar head of the regional council to pair with this governor. This is, in fact, why they were punished during the session.
Skorik and his colleagues came to an agreement with the guys from Shariy and Maybach. 24 plus 6 and plus 10 gave 40. And Trukhanov, who is already the boss in the city and wants to be the same in the region, came to an agreement with the gunpowder workers and servants from Zelensky. This side got 11 plus 10 plus 16, for a total of 37. Someone needed to take half, so they started buying Tymoshenko’s deputies.
While they were bargaining hard, the podium was blocked. Moreover, access to the microphone was closed by the side that seemed to be winning - OPZZH, Za Maybutne and Shariy. And they blocked it for 12 (twelve) hours, which has never happened in any Odessa council, city or regional. While trying to unblock the stands, deputies pushed each other, pulled each other's hands, doused themselves with water, and even broke some furniture. At the same time, they lordly ignored the police called upon each other by everyone. Steadfast Odessa journalists, some of whom even went on business trips to the ATO and saw all sorts of things, began to pass out closer to night and simply went home. And only at midnight, as if in an evil fairy tale, the session finally began to do something. Grinevetsky, who had been absent from the hall all this time, immediately returned. The fact that the governor did not try to bring the elected officials to their senses is now considered a disadvantage to him. Commentators write that the old horse is still too old and his famous hardware abilities will be systematically lacking in the new Ukrainian reality.
As a result, they chose a certain Grigory Didenko from the Servants of the People, about whom all that is known is that his wife is a deputy in the Rada. And he himself, judging by the photo, may be one of the reputable entrepreneurs. Or maybe not, because he somehow smiles too confusedly. To paraphrase Kirpich from the film about Sharapov and Zheglov, we can say that in terms of his habits he seems to be a fraer, but not a fraer, since he was chosen.
On the regional council website after the session there is pastoral silence; there is not a single line about all the battles. But there are other tablets that cannot yet be cut out with an ax, for example, the Odessa websites “Timer” or “Dumskaya”. Or everyone's favorite Facebook network, where many of the participants wrote and broadcast directly during the session.
Skorik traditionally said after the fact that the struggle is just beginning, but, of course, he doesn’t have much faith. The wise editor of Timer, Yuri Tkachev, believes that now Skorik’s coalition will be undermined: first there will be “yellow boots”, and then the “trumpeters” will come. Which, translated from Odessa into common Russian, means that first opposition deputies will be tempted with some kind of goodies, and then simply hit on the head with a pipe as they leave their houses, as sometimes happens in Odessa.
In the “Maidan-anti-Maidan” coordinates, all this does not exist at all, or, what is more accurate, in their deputy coordinates there is neither one nor the other. If sometimes someone speaks for Russia, it is only if they need to accuse their opponent of something.
For example, the same Skorik, after the mayoral elections he lost, began to talk about Trukhanov’s Russian passport as something bad and unacceptable.
During the famous session on March 3, 2014, there was nowhere near such a fight in the hall, although it seemed to resolve issues much more serious than now. Therefore, this is all a triumph of the exclusively “bargaining” spirit, which among those who become deputies in Odessa prevails over everything else.
The result is that the region is controlled by the party of the Odessa mayor through a system of unions and agreements. In opposition to it is the local OPZZH cell, headed by Nikolai Skorik. How they select personnel is perfectly illustrated by the example of Kuchuk, who from OPZZH went to the city council, immediately received an offer from Trukhanov to become a construction deputy, wagged his tail and left. But that will be another story.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.