If you think Putin is bad on GLBT Rights...Check out the New Ukraine Parliament!

[KoKo]

Last edited Sun Mar 2, 2014, 07:17 PM - Edit history (1)

Ukraine has not experienced a genuine revolution, merely a change of elites
The new rulers in Kiev, with links to the right, will never tackle the root cause of corruption in Ukraine: poverty and inequality

Volodymyr Ishchenko


http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/28/ukraine-genuine-revolution-tackle-corruption

The far right has also achieved a major breakthrough in the government. Some commentators have warned that their level of representation in the new Ukrainian government is unparalleled in Europe. The xenophobic Svoboda party controls the posts of deputy prime minister, ministers of defence, ecology, agriculture and the prosecutor general's office. Andriy Parubiy, one of the founders of the Social-National Party of Ukraine and a former leader of its paramilitary youth organisation, who later joined the moderate Batkivshchyna party and efficiently commanded self-defence forces in Maidan, is now the head of the national security and defense council.

At the same time, the protest badly fits into the coup label of a well-planned armed seizure of power. The Maidan movement, particularly its paramilitary arm, was hardly controlled by the parliamentary parties. In fact, these parties were regularly trying to pacify the movement, urging compromises with Yanukovych, albeit without much success.

What is most worrying is that the new government cannot control the infamous Right Sector. Its members are now popular heroes, the vanguard of the victorious "revolution". They have guns captured from police departments in the western regions and now, after Yanukovych's toppling, are demanding that the revolution needs to continue against "corrupt democracy" and liberalism. The liberals celebrating their decisiveness and crucial role in the Maidan movement are now discovering the right's reactionary ideas. Recently, the press secretary of the Right Sector gave an interview saying "we need to tell Europe the right way to go" and save it from the "terrible situation" of "total liberalism", when people don't go to church and are tolerant of lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender rights. It is too soon for the Right Sector to move against the new government – it lacks the support. But the group may lead a new insurrection in the event of a rapid and deepening economic crisis. In the absence of any strong leftist force in Ukraine, social grievances will be whipped up by rightwing populists.

At the same time, the leading role of radical Ukrainian nationalists in potential new "social Maidan" will preclude any all-national movement against the ruling class, with mass participation from the east and the south of culturally divided Ukraine. Moreover, they even amplify separatist attitudes and attempts of pro-Russian provocations, as we have seen in Crimea. The full-scale civil war, although not inevitable, is a real threat now.

In this situation, the best policy for the west would be to insist on the peaceful resolution of the interregional conflicts in Ukraine, taking a strong position against participation of the far right in the new government and uncontrolled rightist paramilitaries on the streets. Last but not least, the west could offer unconditional help to Ukraine by cancelling its foreign debt – a popular demand raised by many progressive movements all over the world.