Monday, March 27, 2006
Election Interference: It's OK If Bush Does It
Remember the wonderful reformist Orange Ukraine government that BushCo backed, partly because Russia's Putin backed the other guys? The one that would stop efforts to return Ukraine to Socialism and provide more troops to Iraq to shore up the PNAC Platoon's rapidly-shrinking Coalition of the Paid Off Willing?
Well, first off, the first thing the Orange folk did upon winning was announce plans to pull Ukrainian troops out of Iraq. Oooops.
Second off, it turns out that all is not roses with the Orange people, especially on the privatization front. One of the movement's leaders was kicked out of the government last year after she dared work to undo the corrupt privatization of a large steel factory, and that has led to the near-collapse of the movement:
At a midnight news conference, Ms Tymoshenko, 45, sporting her trademark breadbasket hairdo, announced she was "practically ready" to form a coalition. And if she does again take up the post of prime minister, the job she lost in September, this time she will have more power than Mr Yushchenko because Ukraine is changing its political system to become a parliamentary rather than presidential democracy. Ukrainians, who had protested against rigged presidential elections and interference by the Kremlin in 2004 and who had finally seen their orange heroes triumph, were bitterly disappointed when the honeymoon between Mr Yushchenko and Ms Tymoshenko ended and the in-fighting started. Not for this, they said, had they camped day after day in freezing weather during the famous street protests in Kiev. The two fell out because Ms Tymoshenko was more radical than Mr Yushchenko. In particular, she sparked unrest by trying to seize back a giant steel factory that had been corruptly privatised under the old regime. Western investors became nervous when they saw that potentially rich Ukraine was becoming unpredictable.Translation: We don't want no high-minded uppity bint messing up our gravy train, dammit! The whole reason we threw all those millions of dollars at you was so you'd let us take over your industries!
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