Here is a link to the live Ustreamcast of #Euromajdan
Please note that this lj-user Zyalt (Ilya Varlamov) is tied with pro-kremlin organisations, despite positioning himself as free-blogger.
I hope they have location services turned off or the photos will show the make up of the defenses.
The government has offered cabinet jobs for the opposition but no word yet on releasing Yulia Tymoshenko from jail or dropping charges against her supporters.
It takes more than elections to make a democracy. A country where political opponents get put in prison on trumped up charges is not a democracy.
Yushchenko is really a relic of the Soviet era who managed to hang on.
Good to know.
I like captions. They add context. I miss photo editors who forced photographers to put their photos into some sort of cogent story.
Otherwise I feel like I am viewing war pornography.
A use for drums other than driving everyone else fucking bonkers. Yay.
Given that the current government was legitimately elected and still has a lot of popular support, this is not as simple as evil government suppressing the populaceās universal desire for European integration. Ukraine seems deeply divided both socially and linguistically. Yanukovych is no doubt self-serving and corrupt, but if the revolution succeeds, do the revolutionaries have the right to impose European integration on a majority of the population that may oppose it?
Like Thailand, this is a case where the anti-government protesters hold the position I support, but may not actually have popular support and certainly donāt have electoral legitimacy for their actions.
Nope. The rules of the presidential election system were changed between the first and the second ballot. the obvious motive was to make it easier to fix the vote. Then they put the other candidate in prison on trumped up charges.
You might think that a legitimate government but most of the world does not.
[quote=āhallam, post:10, topic:20719ā]
You might think that a legitimate government but most of the world does not.[/quote]
Iāve looked around for a bit trying to find official charges that the government was illegitimate from various third party sources (UN, various European governments, etc.) and have not been successful. Would you be so kind as to provide any citations from non-Ukranian sources that I must have missed?
I have no doubt that Yanukovych is capable of fixing an election, but when I was doing reading after the results of the election in 2010 (finding it incredible that they elected him), I could find nothing from international sources that would delegitimize the election results. Dirty tricks and somewhat shady dealings? Yes. Local shenanigans? Yes. But the same can be said for elections almost anywhere, and we generally consider those elections legitimate and not sufficient to justify the overthrow of a government.
Anyway, I may easily have missed something, so if Iām merely misinformed, Iād be grateful for proof.
By whom? If I understand correctly, Yanukovych was the Opposition candidate in the 2010 election. The incumbent president Yushchenko and incumbent Prime Minister Tymoshenko both stood in the election, and both lost. Did they change the rules? Most of the Central Electoral Commission were appointed during Yushchenkoās tenure (under some sort of party quota system which I do not pretend to understand). Did they change the rules?
I am also puzzled as to the point of changing the rules āto make it easier to fix the voteā, because who is in the position to use the change for vote-fixing per se? The incumbents, or the challenger Yanukovych?
I have several questions about this situationā¦
ā¦the guys dressed in camo clothes, armed with iron bars and baseball bats who are throwing molotov cocktail to the police, assaulting official buildings and turning Kievās city center into a battlefieldā¦are the ones asking for democracy?
ā¦If (or when) they succeed in having new electionsā¦what will happen if they donāt like the result?.. will they restart the ārevolutionā?.
ā¦Whatās the role of the āSvobodaā (a far right party) in this riots?
Rob.
Is this spam? Itās hard to tellā¦
Strange that you could look for EU and Ukraine and not find the tymoshenko situation:
ukraine tymoshenko eu
The imprisonment of Tymoshenko on trumped up charges has been raised repeatedly by the EU members. Even if the election was fair, Yanukovich became illegitimate once he started imprisoning members of the opposition on trumped up charges.
Goalposts are in motion here. You initially stated that Ukraineās government was not legitimately elected because āThe rules of the presidential election system were changed between the first and the second ballot ā¦ to make it easier to fix the voteā.
When tlwest asked for evidence for that claim, you have moved on to saying that it doesnāt matter if the government was legitimately elected or not.
Indeed, both the recent security law and the imprisonment of Tymoshenko on trumped up charges are appalling examples of this government in action, and, I would have to add, ample reason for the EU to withdraw their offer of closer integration until Ukraine elects a new government. However, as smut_clyde point out, they donāt materially address my claim about government legitimacy.
I would not, however, be surprised if Yanukovych did resort to outright widespread election fraud next election if he felt it necessary. Iām just not certain that he will feel it necessary.
I understand that the revolutionaries enjoy considerable support in parts of Ukraine, but I feel the bar for removal of a democratically elected government must be very high lest almost every group with popular support that can point at election malfeasance feel justified in the overthrow of the government.
The imprisonment of Tymoshenko is the bigger issue and that has been raised repeatedly by the EU members. Putting the leader of the opposition in jail is in effect rigging the next election by taking out the main candidate.
The issue of the election rigging in 2010 is rather more complex and harder to demonstrate. The international observers released a report saying that they did not see evidence of fraud but they tend to always do that unless the fraud is particularly blatant and clear cut.
What does seem to have happened is that the charges were brought against Tymoshenko in an attempt to force her to withdraw the fraud claim. At any rate, there is plenty of material that is pretty easy to find on this:
all looters are caught and beatenAll alleged looters are beaten? Without due process? Will alleged repeat offenders be lynched? What happens if you accuse the wrong people? [Stephen Cohen][1] predicted this right... this is looking just like mob rule. Yanukovych is a piece of shit but I'm not so sure this mob would rule any better.
Tymoshenko withdrew her allegations of fraud in February 2010. Charges were laid against her in December 2010. Tell us more about the Ukrainian time machine.
So essentially, when your original claims about election-rigging (by the opposition!) led to requests for evidence, you respond that thereās no evidence but no-one can prove that they werenāt rigged.
