We saw that interview with Akhmetov yesterday and I turned to my wife and said, "He's trying too hard." What I meant was that he looked like he was trying real, real hard to appear likeable. He was almost giddy sitting there but a giddy layered over "wound up tight." Maybe it was the attempt of a controlled, close personality to appear personable but he overreached and it just came out giddy.
His first statement was: "I am here to talk about soccer." It was a political interview and so that kind of out of the gates statement might have been funny, and he thought it was because he laughed at it, but it was rammed in. Maybe that's just his personality. Or maybe he is trying to make himself over to appear a gentler, more amiable version of Akhmetov, the billionaire mogul and modern robber baron. There was a smattering of laughs in the press room but I really don't think it went over that well. He's one uptight guy.
But I'll lay off the psychological tea leaf reading.
Yulia doesn't look happy and I guess she isn't too much. She was on TV last night talking about falsification. I don't know how making that case serves helps her--she benefitted from the vote more than anybody but PR-- but making it does keep her in the public eye and on TV. Looks like she is trying to keep up some sort of public drumbeat to make her PM bid inevitable. That is the only control she has over things, except to maybe make her case in private. But she doesn't have access to Yuschenko so she can't do that.
NSNU did very badly. They ended up with less than 14%, worse than the exit polls had it (which, by the way proved more accurate than I gave them credit for. Maybe now I'll have to say "notoriously accurate.") Any consequences that might come from a delay in forming a coalition couldn't be worse than the trouncing they were given on Sunday. Maybe that will factor into their coalition decision. "What could be worse than what we have already suffered?" some might be lead to think. I don't know if it was an article LEvko posted about or not but I read that NSNU will split if it joins with Yulia. We might do well to not underestimate the bad blood that exists personally between people in the two parties. And, though Yuschenko has born the brunt of criticism for not reaching out to Yulia, she herself might have rounded the edges a bit more to make the way smoother for herself in a future PM bid just as a matter of self-interest. But she hasnt done this. The probme is that I think no one thought, including her, that she would be in this position.
She does look a bit worn in her TV appearances, though.
She did say too that her name was linked with re-privatization as an attempt to discredit her and that that was not her position at all. I don't know who will believe that because she was the one agitating for it before. (That 3000 figure came from her.) And I think you will find that her supporters believe she believed that it was the right thing to do because they believe it. But if she now renounces re-privatization, how will that square with giving the people justice?
She does though have some time before the next election and memories may fade by then. But I still think she will have as much trouble with her base as she will have with NSNU or with PR.
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