They're so cute. Seems they had an election where the old-guard, conservative candidate more friendly to the Russians won under highly suspect circumstances (a number of other countries, the US included, have questioned the election's legitimacy), and the people in the cities aren't having any of it. They've basically shut down Kiev. The supporters of the "elected" candidate, for their part, have threatened to secede if his election is overturned. It's chaos!
They need to look to the birthplace of Democracy for guidance. If you have an election that appears to have been rigged, you don't protest! You don't shut down a major city or disrupt commerce. What you do is, you sit back and wait four years and cross your fingers and hope that next time it won't be rigged. Or at least that it will be rigged more convincingly.
And then, in the meantime, you bitch and bitch. Rinse. Repeat.
Silly Ukrainians.
Posted by flamingbanjo at November 29, 2004 11:49 AMmy friend just came back from there and we we got quite starry eyed talking about it last night. it should be noted that it is really, really cold out there. but the part i like about this, almost as much as the mere fact of people standing outside in the freezing cold to make their opinions known, is that the orange and blue people are talking to each other. no violence, at least not yet.
anyway, thank you for this post.
Posted by: anne at November 29, 2004 09:22 PMmy dear friend herr chairperson has been teaching in kiev for three years now and has been sending emails from the ground there. he calls it tense but exciting. (i'll post some of his words when i get permission.)
Posted by: raej at November 29, 2004 11:22 PM