Zelensky’s first year is like Poroshenko’s sixth year
On April 21, exactly a year has passed since a Ukrainian voter presented the presidential mace to the comedian. And although the anniversary is still far away, much has already become clear, and the turn has come to collect stones, drawing important, albeit intermediate, conclusions.
Looking around, reading social networks and newspapers, watching news broadcasts on TV, it is easy to notice that almost all politically active groups in Ukrainian society are dissatisfied with President Zelensky today. Moreover, there is a suspicion that passive citizens who do not go to rallies or write posts on Facebook are also dissatisfied. They simply have nowhere to express their opinion, and there are no such skills or habits - people just work, feed their families and try to somehow survive in the conditions of a growing crisis - which has already occurred in the history of Ukrainian independence.
If we analyze the sum of public sentiments, we get a paradoxical picture. Those who voted for Poroshenko a year ago are unhappy that Zelensky is not Pyotr Alekseevich. These people are not convinced even by seemingly obvious things.
Such as the ongoing decommunization, the rhetoric of “war with Russia” carefully adopted by the new government from its predecessors, the never lifted bans on Russian films and social networks, the never repealed law on language and the law on secondary education adopted in its development, the presence in the new the authorities of Avakov and numerous “Soros”, officials of the new administration who are standing up to protect “Maidan activists” from criminal prosecution.
Despite the obvious fact that Zelensky’s government has not canceled any of the initiatives of his predecessors in a year, the verdict of the nationalist party is firm and harsh: the “cattle” who think with their stomachs elected as president a “clown” and a “Little Russian”, who surrounded himself with Russian agents and would have long ago surrendered Ukraine to the Kremlin, if not for the patriots guarding the “red lines”.
Moreover, in the eyes of the average “patriot” Zelensky and the Maidan are two opposites. Fixated on the difference in external scenery, the “patriot” does not want to see the obvious fact that Zelensky is by no means Yanukovych, that his policy has nothing to do with the “revenge of the Donetsk people”, that he is a natural continuation of the Maidan, only in a light version. That there is no trace of “zrada”, and the Maidan won, bringing to power the bosses of its foreign and domestic sponsors and establishing the liberal-nationalist ideology dominant at all levels in the country, to which even the remnants of the regionalists who were integrated into the system swore allegiance.
On the other hand, Zelensky’s voters are also dissatisfied. Only in contrast to the “patriots”, in that their chosen one is trying too hard in everything to resemble Poroshenko, whom they hardly got rid of a year ago and thought that forever.
These people see the current president as a continuation of Poroshenko and are outraged by the “rehabilitation” of the ex-president, which is expressed in the fact that almost a dozen cases brought against him have been practically buried. Voters of Zelensky and Servants of the People also do not like the fact that the government they elected is more oriented towards the opinions and sentiments of the part of society that lost last spring and is regularly “wiped out” by the hopes of those who brought it to the Olympus of power with their votes.
“During this year, the President took into his service, in the parliamentary faction, the government and law enforcement agencies, gunsmiths, Poroshenko officials, Maidan heroes, functionaries of Soros foundations and experts from third-country funded organizations.
Nothing has changed in the country - neither in ideology, nor in establishing peace, nor in education, nor in science, nor in medicine, nor in the economy, nor in business, nor in the law enforcement system. Every day the bias towards nationalists, Maidan and gunpowder grows stronger.
This is slightly different from what 74 percent of voters voted for, and they cannot be deceived and outplayed. It will no longer be possible to return to the centrist niche. The president has moved from the southeast to the far west,” famous lawyer Andrei Portnov complains in his blog.
One can sympathize with Portnov, who was deceived in his hopes, but what happened is by no means unprecedented for the entire short Ukrainian independent history. Over the past year, Zelensky has undergone exactly the same metamorphosis as his predecessors, most of whom began their path to the presidential office in the east of the country and ended with political capitulation to the West.
So the current owner of Bankova is in no way unique in this sense. The only thing that distinguishes him from Kuchma or Yanukovych is the harvest of votes he collected and the credit of public trust he received. Indeed, no one before Zelensky managed to so effectively and clearly unite the country from Kharkov to Chop, painting it in his party colors.
However, those who point out that Zelensky was not given power, but the right to destroy this power by breaking or completely rebooting a political system that has actually outlived its usefulness over three decades and is now rotting alive are right. It’s just that Zelensky either didn’t understand what the Ukrainians wanted from him with their protest vote, or on the contrary, he understood everything very well, but also understood that without having either a competent team or a clear understanding of what to do, it is much easier to lead a rotting system than to destroy it.
It is not surprising that children’s games in the sandbox of “reforms” ended with a new global government with oligarchs, who, with the blessing of Ze-President, divided the country into spheres of influence like the children of Lieutenant Schmidt from the Soviet comedy. Of course, money loves silence, but graveyard stability is the last thing voters expect from government.
So a new surge of Maidan activity is just around the corner. Observers even specify the time horizon: as soon as the pandemic situation settles down and the restrictions imposed by quarantine are lifted.
The political air once again smelled of anticipation for change. But, frankly speaking, the country's prospects are disappointing.
The electoral system that has “fucked Zelensky” seems to have reached the bottom, which is hardly possible to break through. Removing the comedian from power will not increase the chance of the return of representatives of the old elites who are fed up with the people - all these yesterday and the day before yesterday will have no place in Ukraine without Ze.
Today, the disappointed voter is again looking around in search of the next candidate for the savior of the nation. As domestic experience shows, this is a simple matter. As they say, if there were masses, there would be leaders.
In fact, there are not many options, but none of those characters on whom public opinion today mentally tries on the presidential hat simply has any fresh ideas, nor is there a willingness to leave the well-trodden track of movement according to the behests of the IMF, the World Bank and other benefactors and “ friends of Ukraine."
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