The commenter, DLW, asks some questions:
1. Is the fictional book based on Yulia Tymoshenko having some success in the election? The answer is, I don't know. It is reported to be a best seller and that means people are reading it. And it is a clever way to advertise for a campaign. The copies sell for a dollar. At that price the company can make a profit with the kinds of sales they are reporting, if they are reporting them accurately. (This is a political issue and Ukraine is in the midst of an election after all.) But I wouldn't know how you could measure the impact of a book on the electorate. They could poll it I guess but the polls here have been politics driven so that wouldn't get us much. (And are polls really all that accurate anyway in the best of circumstances?)
2. What is the impact of the civil society institutions having on the elections. The answer to this one is again, I don't know. I haven't seen anything or heard anything about that. There was a lot of activity on the part of various religious denominations, for instance, during the OR. There doesn't seem to be all that much now but that might be because the OR was so public and open. It might still be happening but not in a way that might be reported on or seen. That is it might not be as public as it was.
I imagine we might see some protests after the elections are done with...
ReplyDeleteI know that last year politics caused some serious divisions within churches and so I can see why they'd be reluctant to get involved, particularly with the considerable grey involved in the matter this year unlike last year.
I'm glad to hear that the freedom of religion doesn't seem to be as big of an issue as it was last year. I take it that the Russian Orthodox Church is not publicly holding Yanukovich up as the servant of Christ this year...
dlw