[lit-ideas] Re: The winner has already been selected?

  • From: Judy Evans <judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 19:13:25 +0000

Friday, December 3, 2004, 2:57:50 PM, Phil Enns wrote:

PE> Regarding the possibility of the wrong person being elected, I wrote:

PE> "There is no 'wrong' person."

PE> Judy Evans wrote:

PE> "there's a 'wrong' person in the Ukraine."


PE> Which one?

the one the US Govt didn't fund: I posted the story here, here it is again.

(Addendum: The Guardian has since carried a major article in support of the 
people for Viktor Yushchenko, and various letters both for and against.)

On 26 Nov I wrote:

this is really a reply to an earlier post (on the same subject), it's a comment 
on the demos in the Ukraine. 

(Sorry not to find the right post: the Millennium Centre's opening tonight. I 
couldn't get one of the democratically allocated -- ! -- 1000 free tickets, but 
want to see the TV coverage.)


 The demos were "aided", to put it mildly, by the US.  I don't take the view 
that just because the US has had its own little election problems it can't 
yammer on at the Ukraine re possible problems there, 

[Addendum: the US had just attacked "electoral irregularities" in the Ukraine.]


but do think it's a bit rich to try to remove a politician in another country 
by subterfuge then take the high moral ground when that attempt appears to fail.

also you should know what the US is doing and whom the US is helping (I have a 
second item, from a totally separate source, to support the gist of this, but 
anyway know the journalist I quote here is no kind of pro-Putin hack):

(Excerpt from http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1360297,00.html )

*****************
Oranges can often be bitter, and the mass street protests now going on in 
Ukraine may not be quite as sweet as their supporters claim. 
For one thing the demonstrators do not reflect nationwide sentiments. Ukraine 
is riven by deep historical, religious and linguistic divisions. The crowds in 
the street include a large contingent from western Ukraine, which has never 
felt comfortable with rule from Kiev, let alone from people associated with 
eastern Ukraine, the home-base of Viktor Yanukovich, the disputed 
president-elect. 
Their traditions are not always pleasant. Some protesters have been chanting 
nationalistic and secessionist songs from the anti-semitic years of the second 
world war. 
Nor are we watching a struggle between freedom and authoritarianism as is 
romantically alleged. Viktor Yushchenko, who claims to have won Sunday's 
election, served as prime minister under the outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma, 
and some of his backers are also linked to the brutal industrial clans who 
manipulated Ukraine's post-Soviet privatisation. 
************
(Excerpt from http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1360236,00.html )

****************
Ukraine, traditionally passive in its politics, has been mobilised by the young 
democracy activists and will never be the same again.
But while the gains of the orange-bedecked "chestnut revolution" are Ukraine's, 
the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived 
exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four 
years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury 
regimes.
Funded and organised by the US government, deploying US consultancies, 
pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government 
organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to 
beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.
Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last 
year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching 
Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.
(cut)
The final stage in the US template concerns how to react when the incumbent 
tries to steal a lost election.
In Belarus, President Lukashenko won, so the response was minimal. In Belgrade, 
Tbilisi, and now Kiev, where the authorities initially tried to cling to power, 
the advice was to stay cool but determined and to organise mass displays of 
civil disobedience, which must remain peaceful but risk provoking the regime 
into violent suppression.
If the events in Kiev vindicate the US in its strategies for helping other 
people win elections and take power from anti-democratic regimes, it is certain 
to try to repeat the exercise elsewhere in the post-Soviet world.
The places to watch are Moldova and the authoritarian countries of central Asia.
************




-- 
 Judy Evans, Cardiff, UK   
mailto:judithevans001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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