Award ceremonies all over the world are a certain benchmark of a country’s professional and personal growth. Ukraine has its Person of the Year nationwide contest to recognize leaders in 17 categories: from business to sports. This ceremony has private sponsors and is supposed to be independent from any government influence, much like Hollywood’s Oscars or Norway’s Nobel Prizes.
Ukraine pines for this type of event to single out genuine talent from the backlog of presidential bodyguards who became generals overnight after murky state orders. The 2009 Person of the Year succeeded in honoring some new faces, but failed to stay completely away from politics.
The 14th ceremony was held traditionally in Kyiv’s elite concert hall, Palace Ukraina, on March 20. The trapezium-shaped mansion was built in 1970. Threadbare carpets cover marble floors that still remember Communist Party congresses. One flight of stairs, however, was dressed with a fine red carpet for celebrities and nominees to parade past photographers and onlookers. The invitations required evening dress code, but you would have a hard time finding a woman in a black dress with diamonds. The fashion was anything but dull – feathers, silks, and frills of any thinkable color and shape.
The question, however, was not what you look at but what you see, as Henry David Thoreau once put it. I was looking at a privileged clan in designer outfits, but saw a subway crowd with no class in their eyes – with some rare exceptions.
Like an airplane, the palace was divided into business and economy class lounges. Guests of the more refined breed had seats in the parterre. Students, journalists, and odd hangers-on had the balcony to themselves.
The first award went to boxing champion, Vasyl Lomachenko, who claimed the Olympic gold in Beijing at the tender age of 20. Then the audience greeted designers and entrepreneurs without much brouhaha.
Nonsensical awards started with The Mayor of the Year nomination. Mykhailo Dobkin who was in charge of Kharkiv until earlier this year collected the title. He is the very infamous mayor, whose recorded election speech was leaked on the Internet and generated millions of hits in 2006.
In that video, he doesn’t stop swearing and insulting the people of Kharkiv as he stumbles all over the script on an autocue. Had we lived in a Western nation, the mayor’s diatribe and insults would have generated a big scandal, and resignation would have been inevitable.
But here the story is very different indeed. Imagine Bill Clinton awarded by the feminist movement or any religious organization following the sex scandal in the Oval Office for personal integrity and high ethical standards.
Impossible, right? Not in Ukraine.
Dobkin presided over the city for five years and has recently been promoted to the post of governor of the Kharkiv Oblast. His aid, Hennadiy Kernes, succeeded Dobkin as mayor. In the video, Kernes is heard in the background swearing and telling Dobkin “to stop looking dull because no one would give him money.”
Another “non-political’’ award in the New Generation category went to 29-year-old Irina Berezhna, a parliamentarian from the Party of Regions. She beat two young artists, one of whom won the popular “Ukraine’s Got Talent” TV show for her unique sand art.
The Party of Regions also took The Patron of the Year award. Deputy Eduard Prutnik was singled out for his charity organization One World.
The Magazine of the Year award went to Glavred magazine, whose staff had been on strike for weeks for not getting paid. Its owner, billionaire Igor Kolomoisky, allegedly wanted to close it down. Hopefully the award will keep it afloat for a bit longer.
Some 800 judges are apparently responsible for making these selections. They come from the National Academy of Ukraine, 27 universities and institutes, and 14 ministries, among other places. But what made them choose Dobkin, Berezhna or Prutnik? These choices seem more hypocritical than professional.
The entertainment part, however, tried to remedy the sullied award ceremony. The audience warmly received Ukrainian pop and opera singers occasionally appearing on stage. Most nominees abused their “thank you” time slots making the show last well over five hours.
But keeping to schedule is more than one can expect from a quaint Ukrainian way of recognizing talent. Same goes for politics creeping onto every stage in this country.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuliya Popova can be reached at [email protected].
