Sunday, March 08, 2009

Biassed debate on TV

Watch another marathon 'Svoboda na Interi' TV programme from Friday night, supposedly on the economic crisis, with president Yushchenko and his people in attendance, on-line here .

Only token PoR people present, and no-one to put the government's side of any argument at all...completely biassed.. lots of indignant, lofty protests about how the property rights of Dmytro Firtash and RUE are being cynically trampled upon by the government.

Watching millionaires and billionaires, who made 'wodges of wonga' [bundles of cash..British..informal] by dubious means arguing about these matters on TV will not cut much ice with millions of poorer Ukrainians living on the poverty line.

Meanwhile, those who claim to be directing their efforts into mitigating the effects of the global economic crisis on the common man are deemed to be 'populists'.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who cares about property rights when they belong to a scoundrel likes Firtash. Nobody right? except Firtash and the people he gives money too. Who cares then if the state doesn't pay too much attention to legal nicities and gets a custom official to sign some documents. The only trouble is that if Yulia were in sole charge the process might never end. After all who cares if some undeserving oligarchs have their ill-gotten gains taken away? And then some thieving multinationals or oil and gas extraction compaties etc etc.

Anonymous said...

It's not "who cares about property rights, especially if a scoundrel like Firtash has them"?

Firtash, like the other oligarchs in Ukraine, "stole everything fair and square."

The gas in underground storage no longer belongs to him.

This is not about property rights of Firtash. This is about the rest of his buddies in government using and abusing government to steal the gas back - for Firtash.

This is about one set of oligarchs - Khoroshkovsky, Firtash, and others, with Yushchenko's support, using government for their own personal gain, to fight another group of oligarchs - Tymoshenko and her bunch.

Firtash used a corrupt scheme, RUE, to fund the Party of Roosha.

Except that in Ukraine, there are no political parties.

The Party of Roosha, just like all the other "parties," is just a collection of former sovok insiders, who robbed the country blind, and became very, very wealthy.

Sovoks gone wild.

They want to continue doing that.

And they want to continue using the government, or whatever other means they can think of, to continue doing that.

So - Yushchenko goes on the Firtash channel, with a bunch of Firtash business partners, to prattle on and on and on with platitudes about how there's no need to panic, and about how everyone ought to get along to handle the crisis.

What they SAY and what they DO are 2 different things.

If you read the comments under the Firtash show video link, you'll get a sense of what people think of the whole thing.

It's the Firtash show on the Firtash channel. People ain't buying it.

And Firtash and Yushchenko and Khoroshkovsky (Mentadent) think that Firtash ought to be able to continue stealing money.

And that he has some kind of rights to gas that he does not own.

Maggots.

Anonymous said...

If Tym stays PM and strikes a deal with POR's oligarchs the definition of a thief of the people will be anyone who doesn't contribute properly to her party's coffers. All other oligarchs will be protected and be defined as honest. The unprotected will have no recourse to the courts as now and the newspapers because they'll be owned by the protected oligarchs. They'll be no serious political opposition because no oligarchs to support them. And if some people don't like it then the elections in those areas will simply be cancelled. A lot like Putin's Russia but without all the oil and gas.

Anonymous said...

Oh, give me a break.

There are no courts in Ukraine, and there is no government in Ukraine now.

To say that by protecting Firtash, Yushchenko and Khoroshkovsky are protecting the rights of everyone else is just downright HOGWASH.

The people currently have no rights - there is no "one law for all."

The oligarchs already define themselves as honest.

And it's not because of Tymoshenko alone.

"Let Firtash continue his corruption so that the rights of ordinary people can be protected."

BULL SHIT!

Try another line.