A revolution lives underground Imagine an election process run by the political parties themselves with no independent referee.
Add in a razor's edge margin between shifting coalitions within a few points of one another over the last several elections, which makes every single vote consequential.
That was Sunday's presidential election run-off in Ukraine.
That was also the challenge for an estimated 3,700 international observers, including at least 280 Canadians, trying to cover 35,000 polls in 26 oblasts (provinces) in this country of 46 million.
It was an election where the leading candidate didn't show up for the only debate and parliament was convened a few days ago by one side to make a new set of laws on voting in time for election day.
The years-long see-saw of one group tilting east to Russia and the other west to Europe was overshadowed by a heavily hit economy and a comprehensive distrust of the integrity of institutions. (Ninety per cent in a recent poll said hospitals are corrupt – this before going on to a discussion of corruption in courts, police, banks and politics.)Yet the grim context was belied by the mobilization of half a million dutiful citizens to stage the election themselves through national, regional and poll level committees and by a voter turnout higher than during Canada's last federal election.
The worn schools, factories and volleyball stadiums that housed some of the polling sites often were freezing cold, yet polling station teams of 16 women and men sat for 15-hour shifts, and then sat again in the hallways of municipal buildings waiting for hours more through the night to turn in their bulging bags of ballots and meticulous count protocols to the regional committee.
The enthusiasm of 2004's Orange Revolution is not much evident in today's Ukraine in the face of the failure of expectations of its standard bearers and a paralyzed parliament.
Even a short-term visitor learns that just two of 20 local implement factories in the breadbasket farming zone of Kirovograd oblast are open. You discover this is a society where mothers have to stay overnight with their children in the local hospital to ensure they have care (30 voted on site Sunday), particularly if they haven't paid or can't afford the informal "dues" that too many health-care professionals collect in an ostensibly, but not in reality, free system. Where decrepit schools are regularly shut because of their inability to withstand cold temperatures, and where teachers earn just 700 hryvni (less than $100 U.S.) a month.
And yet there is a certain kind of optimism here. Everywhere one encounters the unflappable determination of the fur-hatted, over-40 crowd and the buoyant outlook of a newly globally oriented youth who refuse to feel trapped in the societal gear-grinding all around them.
Where does the Ukrainian belief in a better tomorrow come from? The thought emerges slowly through a variety of conversations: Citizens feel they really are in charge of reinventing their own society, regardless of the shenanigans and failures of those above them.
The Orange Revolution lives, it seems, underground.
Their humble ambition has already infected hundreds of individual Canadians, many of Ukrainian heritage, who have grown from previous short-term election observers into admirable long-term investors of their personal time, trouble and hope through repeated impressive weeks-long deployments to help regulate the country's do-it-yourself election efforts.
Helpful as the election mission is, the Ukrainian challenge is really an opportunity that cries out for constant, not intermittent, involvement.
Canadian governments, institutions, private companies and NGOs (not only Ukrainian Canadian ones) need to be linked in a strategy to make us a helpful presence that will assist a turnaround for a country that is connected to 1 million Canadians, on the way to forging a mutually beneficial, special social and economic relationship.
My smart 23-year-old translator Yulia tells me the inside joke here is that the only thing to answer foreigners when they ask what's new in Ukraine: "Well, we have another election."A new Canadian commitment founded on respect for the potential in Ukrainian society can help change that punchline – before Yulia loses hope.
James Morton
1100-5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4
416 225 2777
www.jmortonmusings.blogspot.com
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