The ‘bandits’ never ended up behind bars, leaving behind a sour-tasting legacy
Outraged by the government’s brazen attempt to steal the 2004 presidential elections, millions of Ukrainians took to the streets to protest in the Orange Revolution. They swept Victor Yushchenko into the presidency – the opposition candidate who had survived attempts on his life and character assassination in the media, but who persisted campaigning on the promise “Bandits will be in jail!”
But the bandits are not behind bars and those who promised they would be are to blame, according to veteran journalists and authors.
Some of the so-called bandits have died under questionable circumstances. Others found asylum in Russia. But some of the biggest fish Yushchenko promised to catch are freely swimming in Ukraine and even hold high public offices.
Last month, Victor Medvedchuk, the biggest villain according to Orange Revolution adherents, re-emerged in public politics, with his reinstatement to the High Council of Justice, a judicial oversight body.
The appointment will give Medvedchuk a say in which judges are hired and fired as he himself – in the view of his accusers – escapes justice for his role in the 2004 electoral fraud that has been convincingly documented and is available on the public record.
Askold Krushelnycky, a former Kyiv Post editor who chronicled the electoral fraud in his 2006 book “An Orange Revolution: A Personal Journey Through Ukraine’s History,” blames Yushchenko for stalling the prosecution of electoral fraud as part of a deal with Victor Yanukovych, whom he in 2004 accused of committing crimes against Ukraine’s people.
“Yushchenko has disappointed me, as he has millions of his former supporters, by not following through on the promises he made in 2004,” Krushelnycky said. “The process of gathering evidence to prosecute those responsible [for election fraud] began and then Yushchenko announced that it would be abandoned. The consequence of this was not only to signal that election-rigging could continue but that there would not be a serious attempt to curb corruption and crime among the so-called elite.”
Yushchenko’s “biggest disservice has been to undermine the hope of many of Ukraine’s finest, most patriotic and selfless people. He has made them feel foolish for believing his promises and taking a risk on his behalf,” Krushelyncky said.
“The rules of the game that were under Kuchma have not changed,” according to Vakhtang Kipiani, a veteran journalist who published a book about how the Medvedchuk-run presidential administration issued secret directives to national and local media called “temnyky” on how to spin news. Working for a national television channel at the time, Kipiani collected and published 2,500 of those orders.
“Everything’s been forgotten. Everything society stood up for [during the Orange Revolution] has been flushed down the toilet … The poisoning, the server, the temnyky have gone under the cat’s tail,” Kipiani said. “The political tradition has not changed: being public is not a priority for Yushchenko or Tymoshenko.”
Author Dmytro Chobit wrote “Narcissus: Brushstrokes of Victor Medvedchuk’s Political Portrait” in 2002, when Medvedchuk was at the height of his power in Kuchma’s administration. Chobit’s book was an unflattering account of Medvedchuk’s younger years, when he was arrested for assault and served as a defense attorney “for the KGB,” according to Chobit. The print house that printed the book and the garage where Chobit stored the books were burned to the ground. Medvedchuk sued Chobit for libel and a Kyiv court judge ruled in Medevedchuk’s favor.
Chobit said the same judge recently ruled to reinstate Medvedchuk to the High Council of Justice and that Tymoshenko is responsible for Medvedchuk’s political rehabilitation.
“In a normal country, such things would be impossible … As long as there are people like Medvedchuk in government, then there is little hope that things will change for the better. The fabrication of criminal charges is a practice that will continue” with Medvedchuk wielding power in the judicial branch, according to Chobit, who was vindicated by the Supreme Court last year for his expose of Medvedchuk’s past.
