Despite technically
joining an opposition party, Shevchenko’s opposition credentials have been
short-lived, both because the announcement came just a day after a high-profile
meeting between Shevchenko and President Viktor Yanukovych heavy with smiles
and handshakes, and because as political scientist and pundit Andreas Umland
put it: “Andriy Shevchenko has joined Korolevska’s Ukraine-Forward! – a puppet
party whose sole task is to drag away voters from the opposition parties.”
So far, the mysterious
source of Ukraine-Forward’s bursting election war chest, surprising for a party
uncertain to even make it past the five-percent threshold and into the Rada,
supports that claim.
Ukraine-Forward’s charm
offensive and Soviet throwback name aside, however, Shevchenko’s newfound
political career is still part of a wider trend: celebrities playing an ever
larger role in Ukrainian politics.
Perhaps most notable is
WBC heavyweight champion, Vitali Klitshko.
Klitschko has previously
unsuccessfully run for mayor of Kyiv, and his party, UDAR, has competed in
regional elections and will also be competing in the parliamentary contest
(though apparently it won’t be coordinating its campaign with the main
opposition party, Fatherland).
Though less politically
accomplished, even Andriy Danylko, better known as the sequined Eurovision star
Verka Serduchka, once tried to register his own political bloc. Originally called “Against Everyone,” after
the popular ballot option that allowed voters to vote against all listed
candidates, it was later renamed “For Our Own.”
Though Danylko’s
short-lived political career verged closer on farce than the more serious
efforts by Klitschko and now Shevchenko, his parody struck close to the
truth. The name of his would-be block,
“For Our Own,” has strong overtones of corruption, emphasizing how parties work
to benefit themselves and their backers.
At the same time, this pervasive corruption is the same reason so many Ukrainian
celebrities feel the need to take vows of political service.
Celebrities’ campaigns,
of course, are in and of themselves assertions that “professional” politicians
are incapable of solving Ukraine’s problems (a claim many Ukrainians would agree
with and not unrelated to corruption).
The appeal is that with career politicians unable or unwilling to do
what needs to be done,new decisive and effective decision makers need to be
pulled in from other arenas; essentially that Shevchenko could lead Ukraine to
victory as easily as he did so many football teams, or that Klitshko could
knock out Ukraine’s problems from corruption to the global financial crisis as
easily as he does boxers.
Ukraine’s career
politicians are no fools, however, and celebrities wishing to bring Ukraine
salvation through their newfound political involvement are often unsurprisingly
unsure exactly how to do that. They need
established politicians and parties, minor or major, to aid their transition. For their part, the celebrities provide newfound
window-dressing and sex appeal to stale parties unable or uninterested in
distinguishing themselves from other parties, as Shevchenko is now doing for
Ukraine-Forward.
This certainly is the
case in Ukraine’s large neighbor to the north, where an impressive array of
actors, singers, and models are used to spruce up the otherwise monotonous
dominance of Putin’s United Russia.
But there is more to it
than that. Parties across the world run
on politicians’ appeal and personal charisma, but in Ukraine personalities and
parties are linked in a way they are in few other countries. Parties coalesce around personalities they
then live and die with. Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine died with his own political
career, and President Viktor Yanukovych seems to believe Fatherland will waste
away without Tymoshenko and Lutsenko. He
may well be right.
The issue is that in
Ukraine people trust individuals and not parties. It is hard to say why. Perhaps it is the result of so long being
part of a state with only one party in no particular hurry to help anyone and
individual contacts were the only way to get anything done, perhaps it is part
of a longer tradition of electing and following charismatic leaders that goes
back to the Zaporizhian Sich and beyond.
No matter what the
reason, the strength of a party is dependent on the strength of its defining
personality, or occasionally personalities. Ukrainian celebrities are able to
make such easy transitions into politics because they are able to transfer the
trust and respect they earned in another field into political capital. The fact that they don’t come from within the
broken political establishment only works to their advantage.
Freelance journalist Ian Bateson can be followed on
Twitter here: @ianbateson.
