President Viktor Yanukovych

"Landep News"

President Viktor Yanukovych

Ukraine is celebrating today independence day amid sadness caused by the fact that 20 years after the country left the Soviet Union it hasn’t been able to find an economic path to take it to prosperity and affirmation of its full potential. The festivities were also disturbed by protests over the arrest of Yulia Tymoshenko, who was accused by the judges of having signed a contract with Russian Gazprom by which the Ukrainian people lost an important quantity of money.

Tymoshenko was arrested three weeks ago, being held in contempt of the court after she insulted the judge on various occasions, and refused to cooperate with the judicial system. Her appeal was turned down and the sentence against her was upheld by the judges, which also refused to take an action that would condemn the arrest, saying that preventive arrest is not subject to criminal law.

Tymoshenko’s supporters took to the streets of Kiev on Wednesday in spite of the fact that the authorities of the state prohibited it. The movement was called “Committee for Resisting Dictatorship in Ukraine,” and wanted to march from the statue of Taras Shevchenko, the national poet, toward the main avenue in Kiev.

Thousands of people ignored the fact that the protest was illegal, and went on to protest, blocking traffic and clashing with the security forces, who came to the spot to relief the main avenues traffic.

After the security dispersed them, they were summoned by Tymoshenko’s ally Olexander Turchinov to the Independence Square, where they had staged the Orange Revolution in 2004.

Still, Tymoshenko wasn’t able to draw the attention she used to in the days of the Orange Revolution, when she was looked at with high hopes. The people who are ready to stay in the streets and fight the security forces are fewer and fewer, after a disastrous rule by the side of Viktor Yushchenko, who testified in court against her, saying he had not been informed of the contracts she was signing and that when he got word he was amazed to see she had signed for a $450 per 1,000 cubic meters when she could have obtained it for $200.

This seems to the core of the accusation against her, which the state is bringing, and if she is found guilty, she could stay behind bars for up to 10 years, given that the contracts she signed could be, and are being, construed as an abuse of office, because it would seem she was not entitled to by Ukrainian law.

Pro-Tymoshenko Protest

If she goes to jail, which she might, in spite of the criticism from both her supporters and the Western allies, that hers is a political case intended to remove her from the next elections, she wouldn’t be the first Ukrainian leader to stay behind bars.

The former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko serves time in an U.S. penitentiary for money laundering, while former president Leonid Kuchma is under investigation for assassination of journalist Georgy Gongadze, killed in 2000.

These corruption cases should satisfy to some extent the Ukrainian citizens, who think, by 61.7 percent that the situation has not improved since 1991, if one considers that the former dignitaries of neighboring countries like Romania have never been brought to justice, be that politically motivated or not, and chances are they never will be, in spite of the fact that not a day goes by without press releases that speak of acts of corruption, and in some cases even murder, and in the case of the first president after the fall of Communism, multiple murder by means of incitement of the miners against the people in the capital of the country.

The same situation is in Moldova Republic, or in Georgia, Belarus and Bulgaria, which should give Ukraine reasons to think that its judicial system really works. Even if it doesn’t, when compared to democratic systems.

Not all the Ukrainian were gloomy though, as they celebrated 20 years of independence. The president of the country, Viktor Yanukovych, of Russian descent and considered a “Russian puppet” by Tymoshenko’s “patriots,” was confident on Wednesday that the country was heading toward an European future, and that it could look at integration into the continental structures.

Yanukovych won the elections in 2010 being perceived as the man of Kremlin, but was able to confiscate the rhetoric about European integration, of the opposition, and is very close to signing the preliminary agreements that would pave the road to EU of the largest state in the region (except for the Russian Federation, of course).

In other words, by the time Tymoshenko’s fate will be decided by the judge, her promises will be fulfilled by her political opponent. If that happens, Tymoshenko won’t be able to enjoy an acquittal, if she gets one, and her political career could be ended by “natural causes.”

Thank's for link:

Tweet