Saturday, January 01, 2005

The resignation

It has been reported extensively that Yanukovych has resigned. I don't know what that does other than to make sure that he won't be back in his office on Monday. And he would have a lot of trouble with that even because of the blockade.

Apparently, he said this in his speech last night. That speech we passed by while flipping through the channels. I couldn't tolerate it much. It had the tendency to depress the spirit of the evening for me even in the seconds we were exposed to it. It affected everyone else here the same way, I might add. So we didn't watch it.

It wasn't all that significant anyway. Does anybody really think that people in the government or anywhere else for that matter are going to be dealing with Yanukovych any differently now than they did when he was Prime Minister this past week or in any number of the weeks before that? Put another way, does he have any less power now that he has resigned than he did as Prime Minister, at least ultimately? I don't think so. So to me the resignation had no real effect.

But it might get him off the TV which would be a good thing. I was trying to figure out last night whether I had ever heard Yanukovych speak without his uttering some sort of a threat. (It might have been a reason to listen last night to see if there was one there too.) But I can't remember one time when there wasn't one. It has all been threats. At least now we might not have to hear him--at least as much as we have. That would be an improvement.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just read this surprising post, where Leonid Kuchma is said to have congratulated the Ukrainian people, saying that he was, "[G]reatful to everyone who facilitated constitutional reform" and helped to reach a "peaceful settlement in the recent political crisis."

He said the nation would have a new President and that, "The whole of Ukraine, every region and every person should accept the democratic choice as his own" because the new president, "is going to need your support.

Perhaps it was just a chance for Kuchma to try to take some of the credit for what has happened... but, his words are no less significant. It seems the Kuchma era is about end, perhaps sans further dirty tricks. At least, we can hope it is so...