I grew up in a country where people with abilities don't have authority and people with authority don't have abilities. And now, just a week before parliamentary elections in Ukraine, I can say that it still remains this way.
It's been nearly a year since the Ukrainian protest movement began and was turned into a national revolution that was smashed by war with an external aggressor. For a year now we've been demanding a radical change of the system that was rotting Ukraine for the last 25 years. The system in which oligarchs are taking chairs in the parliament being surrounded by their fellow oligarchs and members their families. The system in which for the coming elections, those oligarchs would kindly exchange their chairs and continue to destroy the country all together.
Our demands for a new system have clearly not been fulfilled. 90% of the candidates are people that were destroying the country for those 25 years, including Yanukovich's allies. The "after-Maidan parliament" will be made of people against whom the Maidan was gathering. Fidel Castro once said: "revolution is a battle between past and future", and until now, past is keeping the strongest position in the Ukrainian revolution.
Poroshenko, even if he was the less evil candidate for the presidency, is now using his relative popularity to bring in the parliament his old oligarch friends, whom are clearly considered as long time enemies of the Ukrainian people. But the most dangerous part, is that this time the parliament has an alibi: they are all fighting against Russia and Putin and in this way they manage to redirect public attention away from themselves and their policies.
Checking Ukrainian press, I do not need to search much to find journalists reports on the traditional process of "buying votes". I doubt UK people know what this really is. I remember as a child that before every election someone would ring at our door and give us a box with food or even a microwave, and at the same time a candidate's program. And sadly, by matter of fact, this is still how Ukrainian politicians are managing their pre-election campaign.
I don't want to seem too sceptical but those knowing more about Ukraine than what we can read in international press will understand my moody text. It's moody not because I want to complain on politicians but it's moody because Ukrainian people don't deserve to be disappointed again, as they were after the Orange Revolution. They don't deserve it because they fought harshly and loudly, bleeding and falling on their knees for a new Ukraine, with new leaders.
It's now that we realize that having revolution in the streets without having a revolution in the parliament is a waste of people's hopes, and often lives.