Reuters - 08.23.2001

 

 

Reuters

Little Cheer a Decade After Ukraine's Independence

By Olena Horodetska

Kiev, Aug. 23 -- Ukraine will celebrate the tenth anniversary of its declaration of independence amid pomp and ceremony on Friday, but many people in the nation of 49 million have only one question: How did it all go so wrong?  

Independence, a cherished dream during 70 years of Soviet rule and three centuries under Russian tsars, has been soured by poverty, corruption, and a rapidly shrinking population.  

"For the majority, today's reality is a big and unpleasant surprise. It is not the country they had in their dreams in 1991," said political analyst Mykola Tomenko.

"We have built a formal Ukraine, a state which has flags and symbols, but it is a country for the governing elite, not for people, an autocratic country ruled by powerful businessmen."

A walk down the capital Kiev's tree-lined streets illustrates Tomenko's point: police halt traffic for scores of Mercedes limousines with blackened windows which scream past pensioners looking for empty beer bottles to sell.  

A recent poll by the Institut Polityki, an independent think tank, said nearly 84 percent of Ukrainians were disappointed in their country and believed independence had not brought them what they expected.  

The current mood is in a sharp contrast to the mass enthusiasm 10 years ago when parliament proclaimed Ukraine independent on August 24, 1991, three days after the collapse of a hardline Communist coup in Moscow.  

Nine out of 10 Ukrainians endorsed independence in a referendum three months later.

Hopes were high then that Ukraine, the breadbasket of the Soviet Union and home to a huge coal and steel industry, would quickly surpass its former Soviet brothers and join more developed countries in Western Europe.

REALITY BITES

But the reality proved to be more challenging.

The need to pay for energy supplies from abroad and a difficult transition from central planning to a market economy led to economic collapse, hyper-inflation and poverty for many.  

Early privatisations played into the hands of a new elite who became known as oligarchs, businessmen with financial power matched by political influence which allowed them to buy up industries at knock-down prices.  

The murky dealings at the top of Ukrainian society -- one former prime minister is facing trial in San Francisco and has been convicted of massive money laundering by Swiss authorities -- are matched by petty tax crimes lower down.

This unofficial economy is estimated to be about the size of the official economy. Ukraine is rated as one of the 10 most corrupt countries in the world by Transparency International, a Berlin-based graft watchdog which publishes an annual Corruption Perception Index of more than 90 countries.  

Following the meltdown sparked by Russia's financial crisis in 1998, the country has finally started to pull itself out of the mire after almost a decade of economic recession.  

Last year it posted its first ever gross domestic product growth on the back of strong exports and what analysts said was a decisive effort to reform the financial sector and stamp out corruption in the energy sector.  

MURDER SCANDAL ECLIPSES ECONOMIC GROWTH

Growth continued this year with GDP rocketing 10.5 percent in January to July, year-on-year, albeit from a very low base.  

But that positive news was all but eclipsed by a political scandal sparked by the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, a harsh critic of incumbent President Leonid Kuchma.

The discovery of his headless corpse late last year and subsequent publication of tapes on which a voice similar to Kuchma's ordered his kidnapping rocked the country.  

Kuchma denies any involvement and survived months of political protests during which thousands took to the streets.  

Serhiy Makeyev, an analyst at the Institut Polityki said polls showed 60 percent of Ukrainians were ashamed of their country, many citing the Gongadze case as a principle reason.

Nearly a year after the murder, authorities have not made a single arrest. Opposition activists often accuse them of bungling cover-ups, including several attempts to declare the case 'solved' without any apparent evidence.  

"We started in a democratic parliamentary republic, but now we live in an autocratic presidential state," said Makeyev.  

The Council of Europe, a club of democracies, has threatened to revoke Ukraine's membership and the United States has cut aid, citing concerns over press freedom and democracy.

The chill in relations with the West pushed Ukraine, which spent most of the last decade balancing the opposing currents of Russian and Western influence, back into Moscow's embrace.

Without apparent irony, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to Kiev to participate in the independence festivities.

"I feel as if we were back to the good old Soviet Union. The Russian master comes to his Ukrainian province and we are eager to show off," said Tatyana, 46-year-old teacher. "I won't celebrate. I will go and dig potatoes at my dacha."