Oh irony of ironies! In China, the rich have taken to the
streets in protest. Ukraine doesn’t even have a golf course, and Chinese nouveau righteous are upset
that their golf clubs are at risk.
The Economist just had a
little piece about people who bought pricey properties in an exclusive
development in Beijing. The developers tried to screw them. They were going to
replace the planned recreational land and facilities with more residential
buildings. That way, they could sell even more apartments and make even more
money. In other words, they were going to increase the density and remove the
frills that made people want to pay $60-120,000 per flat in the first place.
Call it dilution of estateholder value.
The
scam is not the point – happens every day. The protest is. Those people got out
there with placards and bats and started causing mayhem!
And
they got their way.
Of
course, they also established an owners’ committee and hired a good lawyer to
take the case to court.
And
they got their way.
“As
long as protesters focus their attention narrowly on the issues that concern
them, the government has been willing to listen,” Dali L. Yang, a political
scientist at the University of Chicago was quoted in The Economist as saying. “Such day-to-day
demands by ordinary folk will continue to make China a better place.”
Of
course, China is the land of Tienanmen Square and the persecuted Falun Gong. Protest and
the risk of person for the sake of a cause are hardly something new. Standing
up for what you believe is a tradition, whether you were a communist in 1941 or
a democrat in 1991. The Chinese have always done a lot of voting with their
feet, whatever the cause, good, bad or ugly.
The
Poles and Hungarians, two of Ukraine’s nearest neighbors, also have a modest
and sometimes effective history of public protest. In the last 10-12 years,
even downtrodden Romanians and hard-core Serbs said enough is enough and
removed their murderous leaders.
Here
in Ukraine, however, decade after decade goes by, abuse after abuse, and the
people are mum. Yes, the kvetch factor is very high, but no one raises their
head in public protest.
The
fact is, Ukraine has no history of public protest. The closest it ever got was
during the kozak era. The kozaks who voted a hetman in could also put on trial
and pike the guy if he didn’t satisfy them. Which they did in 1630 with Hrytsko
Chorniy.
But
the average Ukrainian was usually at the bottom of the social totem pole,
whether under the Poles or under the Russians. There were no Peasants’ Revolts
or Glorious Revolutions, no Black Sea Tea Parties or General Strikes. When
Ukrainian farmers and peasants refused to collectivize in 1930, they forgot to
organize. So they were starved to death by the millions on their tiny bits of
devastated land.
In
other words, organized protest has not been a part of the vocabulary of
Ukrainians for a very long time.
Yet
public protest is important – what Americans like to call, voting with your
feet. Using the strength of numbers and risking somebody’s wrath in order to
get something changed. It works with supermarket chains. It works with
landlords and developers. It works with government agencies. Sometimes it’s the
only way to effect change.
This
is what made last year’s tape scandal such a big deal.
Suddenly,
Ukrainians were mobilized. Or, at least some of them were and the rest took
notice. The protest was eventually squelched. For one thing, it wasn’t narrowly
focused, as Mr. Yang recommends.
Still,
I think there was change as a result.
The
guys at the top, all of them, are worried.
Not
scared – that would be an exaggeration – but definitely worried.
Why
else would they agree to a better election law? Regardless of how flawed it
was, the first time round, it’s been implemented.
Why
else would the television channels be buzzing with debate? The most obscure
candidates have managed to get themselves air time and column inches.
If
it was really a done deal, would various tycoon-class politicos try so hard to
improve their images? Would the president need to set up a bloc that is
obviously “his” political party? In the past, it was good enough to have a
“party of power” – regardless of its name.
A
lot of people think that today, more than ever, Ukraine is on its way down in a
handbasket.
I
disagree. Politically, Ukrainians are struggling uphill, not down. They’re
going against a very, very long grain. But they are slowly going against it.
Maybe
sometime soon, people here will vote again with their feet, as well as with
their ballots.
They
could protest the squandering of millions on cheesy sculptures and arches. Or
they could get a neighborhood protest going over parklands being destroyed for
private construction.
It’s
the day-to-day ordinary issues that can sometimes set bigger change in motion.
Besides,
wen you vote with your feet, there’s no mistaking what you voted for.
It’s
a ballot no one can steal. •
–from the
notebooks of Pan O.
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