When you think of Ukraine, what do you think of? Maybe it's Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in the history of the world. Or maybe you think of the allegations that Ukraine's outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma, sold radar systems to Saddam Hussein just months before the war began. Or maybe nothing comes to mind when Ukraine is mentioned, if at all, in conversation.
Yet in the past week, the chaos surrounding the Presidential election results between former Prime Minister Victor Yushchenko and current Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych has appeared on the front page of every major newspaper in the country. Ukraine has made little world-scale news since it gained its independence in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union. But now, in the words of President Bush: "The world is watching."
And finally, the world is watching for a good reason - not because of a nuclear catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have turned out in Kiev to protest the results of an election that has been marred by blatant election fraud. Current Prime Minister Yanukovych, who has the support of outgoing President Kuchma and the Russian Czar, I mean President, Vladimir Putin, allegedly defeated opposition leader Victor Yushchenko by a mere three percentage points. But a laundry list of election fraud allegations, based on the reports of every Western election monitor organization, has sparked a revolution in Ukraine.
The vast majority of alleged election fraud has taken place in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, which is the stronghold of alleged winner Yanukovych. Several techniques have been used by Yanukovych supporters to falsify the elections, including multiple voting, voter intimidation and post-election vote tampering. Certain regions in the East had abnormally high voter turnout percentages of over 95 percent. There were even allegations that voting stations were supplying Yushchenko supporters with "magic" ink that disappeared minutes after being used to mark ballots. In other words, the list goes on and on of how obviously tainted the election was in Yanukovych's favor.
Ukraine, like Russia and Belarus, is a relatively new democracy and by no means comes close to resembling a Western, liberal democracy. Outgoing presidents, like Kuchma, will select and endorse their successors and will not even attempt to hide government bias. State-controlled media will feed the population propaganda to boost the prospects of the government-backed candidate and put down the voice of opposition. The president will also help fund his preferred candidate's campaign to the utmost extent, as well as ignore blatant election fraud if his candidate benefits. So, being the opposition candidate is an absolute nightmare, as he or she does not have access to sufficient funding, a fair and unbiased media and most importantly, a trustworthy election commission.
This electoral process is a far cry from the mostly fair and unbiased elections of the West. Yet the massive protests staged by supporters of Yushchenko suggest that the population of Ukraine is sick and tired of the status quo. Ukrainians are demanding free and fair elections that simply do not exist in Russia and Belarus, and as a result Ukraine is beginning to resemble the liberal democracies of the West. A sea of orange, Yushchenko's campaign color, has engulfed Kiev and blockaded government buildings, making the color a symbol of democracy.
As a result of these incredible circumstances, the international headlines coming out of Ukraine are no longer dominated by major catastrophes. Though the world is now viewing a country in turmoil, one cannot overlook the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have boycotted their jobs and braved freezing-cold temperatures to demand fair elections. For the first time since Ukraine gained independence in 1991, Ukrainians and the worldwide Ukrainian diaspora can hold their heads up in pride.
Stephan Vitvitsky is a junior majoring in Economics and Political Science. He can be reached via e-mail at Stephan.Vitvitsky@tufts.edu.
