December 01, 2004

Ukraine Parliament Votes Out Gov't

Ukraine's parliament brought down the government Wednesday, approving a no-confidence motion as international mediators gathered in the capital to try to bring the spiraling political crisis to a peaceful resolution.
[...]
Both campaigns are pinning their hopes on the Supreme Court, which convened for a third day to consider Yushchenko's appeal for the official results to be annulled. The opposition has presented its allegations of fraud and demanded Yushchenko be named the winner based on his narrow edge in the election's first round on Oct. 31. It remains unclear when a ruling will come.

The political crisis stoked fears of Ukraine's breakup. Yushchenko draws his support from the Ukrainian-speaking west and the capital, while Yanukovych's base is the Russian-speaking, industrialized east.

The West has refused to recognize the results, while Russia — which still has considerable influence over Ukraine — congratulated Yanukovych and complained of Western meddling.

Gosh! Isn't this exciting?!
Who knows how it will turn out?
I hope not with Putin's boy Yanukovych taking power and handing Ukraine back over to the USSR Russia.
The incomparable David Warren says that the whole mess is a "good thing:"
[...]
The rest of the international community is coming off well. Starting with uncompromising statements of support for the demonstrators from Vaclav Havel in Prague, and from the White House in Washington, the idea that the fraudulent Ukrainian election was not only unacceptable, but could be overturned, quickly spread through the European capitals, and now Kiev is filling up with European mediators, running back and forth between the factions.

Is this interference in Ukrainian internal affairs? You bet, and let's hope we get more of the kind.

It would seem that the Kuchma legacy is going down, in the person of Mr. Yanukovych, in that slow-motion way in which oversized statues descend from eastern pedestals. And when the dust clears, it is likely the Ukraine will have shifted considerably towards the West.

Yes, David: let's hope and pray that Ukraine not only shifts to the West and towards democracy, continued independence and orderly, free elections but that this huge screw-up causes Vladimir Putin to do some soul-searching and change his recent Soviet, "evil empire"-like ways.
We here in America didn't spend the last 50 years and God knows how much money, time, effort and lives to win the Cold War only to have to refight it in the 21st Century!

And we can't forget the courage of the Ukraine's people who've braved the cold and perhaps disguised Russian troops to stand up to Putin's puppet--without their outrage, Ukraine might have become another Venezuela, where Leftist thug Hugo Chavez averted his own recall by major fraud and got Jimmy Carter to sign off on the results.
As Venezuelan blogger Aleksander Boyd reports,
his country is becoming an increasingly unpleasant place to live, which is what happens when a tyrant like Chavez or Yanukovych are given total power.