Ukraine's citizen and student activists continue the revolution on local level

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - For most Ukrainians, the Orange Revolution ended in late January, on the Sunday afternoon that President Viktor Yushchenko took his official oath of office in the Verkhovna Rada.

By then, all tents were folded and Khreschatyk was once again Kyiv's bustling business center.

In the weeks since, however, thousands of citizen and student activists throughout Ukraine have shown they are not entirely satisfied with the revolution's results and are determined to ride out its momentum to the fullest extent.

They continue to protest, hold hunger strikes and demand that corrupt government and university officials resign their posts, particularly those who violated election laws and persecuted Yushchenko supporters.

The most visible conflict erupted in Odesa this week, after a regional court ruled it would review the city's controversial mayoral elections of 2002 that involved alleged voting fraud and resulted in the victory of the city's current mayor, Ruslan Bodelan.

The complaint was filed by his challenger, Eduard Hurvits, who was supported by hundreds of protesters outside the Prymorskyi regional courthouse wearing orange clothes and flying yellow Pora flags throughout the hearings.

As a result, the same court began reconsidering Mr. Hurvits' complaint of fraud the day after the March 16 ruling.

If it decides that the mayoral vote was falsified, the judge may declare Mr. Hurvits Odesa's new mayor or call for a new vote, according to the Ukrainska Pravda website.

Another regional court in Odesa had sealed Mr. Bodelan's victory in May 2002, and the new ruling prompted outrage among Mr. Bodelan's supporters, who responded to his call.

"Don't hide your head in your shoulders and drop your eyes to the ground," said Mr. Bodelan, urging his supporters to take to the streets.

About 500 of his supporters, many decked out in blue and white, showed up at the courthouse steps the morning of March 16, where they clashed with policemen.

Five people were hospitalized as a result, according to the Odesa internal affairs administration.

Meanwhile, a hunger strike conducted by Yevpatoria activists reached a week in Crimea on March 15.

They are conducting the strike at the offices of the city's education chair, Marina Vedmedska. They accuse her of having allowed school officials to distribute materials that promoted the presidential candidacy of former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, and say that some of these materials posed a danger to young students.

Such political materials consisted of textbooks with a picture and message from Mr. Yanukovych on the inside cover, as well as 500 expensive soccer balls with the political slogan, "Let's Unite for the Future - Viktor Yanukovych."

The textbooks were not published for the schools' physical education programs, but for extracurricular sports activity, said Eduard Leonov, a leading activist of Pora (It's Time) in Crimea.

The soccer balls, meanwhile, are heavier and harder than standard soccer balls, posing a physical threat to those students who play with them, he said. Both these items remain in the hands of students, even after the presidential campaign.

As in Odesa, the Yevpatoria hunger strike has drawn conflict. Members of the Russian Community of Crimea, as well as students from a local school, attacked the strikers, Mr. Leonov said.

The strikers' goal is to get the Yushchenko administration to ensure safety in Crimea and to bring to justice those who have broken laws, Mr. Leonov said. He insisted there were no political demands.

"Crimean voters, whether for Yushchenko or Yanukovych, voted primarily to change their lives for the better," Mr. Leonov said. "Therefore the new power, Yushchenko's administration, not only has the right, but has the responsibility to immediately investigate the situation that unfolded in Crimea."

Cherkasy was the site of a particularly bitter battle between the rector of Khmelnytskyi National University of Cherkasy and a well-organized group of activists who demanded that he resign his post.

The university's rector, Anatolii Kuzmynskyi, used his position to promote Mr. Yanukovych's candidacy and persecute those who supported Mr. Yushchenko, according to Serhii Honchar, a Pora activist and university student in Cherkasy.

During the elections, Mr. Kuzmynskyi forbid students living in the dormitories from wearing or posting Yushchenko logos or materials, Mr. Honchar alleged.

The rector also called mandatory assemblies at which he gave pro-Yanukovych speeches, Mr. Honchar charged. Mr. Kuzmynskyi ordered that lists be drawn up of those students who failed to attend, he added.

During the second round of the presidential election, pro-Yanukovych students offered to buy other students' passports for between 100 and 150 hrv and hold them until the end of voting, Mr. Honchar alleged. This was an attempt to inflate Mr. Yanukovych's vote tallies, he alleged.

Pora and Studentska Khvylia (Student Wave) members held a hunger strike for seven days, drinking only water and tea.

Mr. Kuzmynskyi refused to resign, and, after the hunger strike concluded, his supporters held their own counter-hunger strike to declare their solidarity with the embattled rector.

More than 1,700 students signed a petition in support of Mr. Kuzmynskyi, said Natalia Ostapenko, an assistant rector and lecturer at the university. Khmelnytskyi University has more than 6,000 students.

In a letter published in the Ukrainian daily newspaper Den, Ms. Ostapenko credited her supervisor with doubling the university's academic departments, renovating dormitories and creating a museum complex preserving, among other things, Cherkasy literature.

About 130 students traveled to Kyiv to meet with Mr. Yushchenko and express their support for the embattled rector.

On March 2, however, Mr. Kuzmynskyi surrendered to the protests and submitted a letter of resignation to Ukraine's education minister, Stanislav Nikolayenko.

The university is currently selecting its new rector, a process that will take about a month.

Protesters also have achieved success beyond the university level. Among the most visible was the resignation of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Chairman Serhii Kasianov.

Incidentally, it was President Yushchenko who selected Mr. Kasianov as oblast chairman, even though he had allegedly campaigned for Mr. Yanukovych.

Mr. Kasianov was a member of Volodymyr Lytvyn's National Agrarian Party, which was largely neutral in the elections until the last weeks, when Mr. Lytvyn threw his support behind Mr. Yushchenko.

It is widely believed among political observers that Mr. Yushchenko appointed Mr. Kasianov as a reward to Mr. Lytvyn, the Verkhovna Rada chairman, for his support during the revolution, a political appointment system referred to as party quotas.

Mr. Yushchenko also appointed another Lytvyn ally, Vitalii Oluiko, as chairman of the Khmelnytskyi Oblast.

Apparently, Mr. Yushchenko's ability to forgive and forget was far greater than what his supporters were able to bear.

Hundreds of stunned Khmelnytskyi residents immediately began protesting against Mr. Oluiko after Mr. Yushchenko announced his Cabinet and oblast appointments on February 4.

"This spits in the face of 80 percent of Khmelnychany who voted for Yushchenko," said Mykola Brianhin, a leader of the Yushchenko campaign staff in Khmelnytskyi, when learning of Mr. Oluiko's appointment.

"Those who worked for Yanukovych are celebrating a victory. It looks as if certain people created the revolution, while others are reaping its harvest," he added.

Five days after the announcement, Mr. Yushchenko approached protesters outside the Presidential Secretariat building and produced for them Mr. Oluiko's resignation letter.

After the uproar in Khmelnytskyi, Mykola Tomenko, the vice prime minister for humanitarian affairs, said the president would be more critical of the requests put forth by his political allies.

"The situation surrounding the Khmelnytskyi Oblast head is a significant lesson for politicians supporting party quotas," Mr. Tomenko said.

It took longer for Mr. Kasianov's enemies in Dnipropetrovsk to force a resignation. In his case, Pora activists united with the city's oligarchs in their opposition to Mr. Kasianov, a 38-year-old national deputy who is the owner of numerous trading and manufacturing enterprises.

Pora opposed Mr. Kasianov for his alleged support of Mr. Yanukovych, which he denies. The oligarchs opposed him because he didn't belong to their circle, according to news reports.

Mr. Kasianov blamed the "powerful business structure in Dnipropetrovsk" for pressuring his resignation, which became official on February 24.

For the protesters, it's as though the Orange Revolution had flung off the lid to a kettle that is now boiling over with pent-up frustration.

Equipped with a power they never thought they had, Ukrainians now feel emboldened to influence their government, but naturally in their own self-interest, said Mykhailo Pohrebynskyi, the director of the Center for Political Research and Conflict Studies.

"Those who came to power can't seem to stop themselves," Mr. Pohrebynskyi said. "They are continuing the revolution for their own selfish purposes."

Referring to the Odesa ruling, Mr. Pohrebynskyi said judges are doing what's the current popular trend in politics and ignoring the law. "To protest what happened three years ago and remove a mayor is absolutely absurd," he said.

College students continue to lead the grassroots activism, as they are typically the most idealistic and energetic segment of any society. They led such citizen groups as Pora, Studentske Bratstvo and Studentska Khvylia, which were instrumental in the Revolution.

Studentske Bratstvo's goal is to ensure that Ukraine's Education Ministry terminates its contracts with corrupt rectors, said Oleh Yatsenko, the head of Studentske Bratstvo. So far, about 10 have been forced out, Mr. Yatsenko said, and they're not done. Campaigns are still under way to force the mayor of Kamianets-Podilskyi to resign.

He said he expects more rectors will be forced to resign too. In particular, Mr. Yatsenko said, the rector of the prestigious Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, Viktor Skopenko, has pressured students ever since Ukraine's Communist days and is a leader in the Social Democratic Party of Viktor Medvedchuk, an oft-cited provocateur in former President Leonid Kuchma's regime.

This type of cleansing needs to occur, Mr. Yatsenko said, in order to avoid repeating what happened in 1991, when Communist Party members simply switched their flag to blue-and-yellow colors but retained power and initiated minimal reforms in government, he said.

"Now they're trying to change their colors to orange," Mr. Yatsenko said. "We want to clear these people aside, at least for five years, either through ethical or legal lustration."

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 20, 2005, No. 12, Vol. LXXIII

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