One of the most striking, and perhaps insightful, things I heard during our trip to Ukraine was about a former British politician. One of our contacts in Kiev told me the tale of meeting a former MP who had given up politics to become a businessman. This was the “strangest thing” the Ukrainian
visitor had encountered on his UK trip. “It was the wrong way round,” he said. “Here, if you want to be rich you give up business for politics.”
Everywhere we went in Ukraine, one view of national politics that united supporters of all sides was the money involved. Fresh from digesting the news that a university degree can be bought from all but a handful of institutions, we are told that a parliamentary seat is little different. And this idea, that a place in the national parliament is yours for somewhere upwards of $5m, is repeated everywhere we go. In return for a listing that could catapult you into politics is the promise of influence and, with that, improved business prospects.
Of course, everywhere in the world a bit of money makes the path to politics a far easier one, but what people seemed to be telling us here was that parliamentarians were almost directly buying seats. One man even claimed to be a broker in this. Asked about moral pitfalls of such a sideline, he said: “Above all, I am pragmatic.” Other Ukrainians we met certainly weren’t in denial about this supposedly widespread phenomenon. But few could think how to change the situation. It was at the offices of electoral monitor the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, probably the country’s biggest NGO and self styled “hero of the Orange Revolution”, that we first heard the seat-buying stories. Asked how to stop it, they simply said: “You can highlight it and create some negative PR.”
But who will run the negative PR in a country where even senior reporters told us: “I don’t think many Ukrainian journalists worry about finding the truth.” And maybe that is what it comes down to. The Orange Revolution ushered out an era when newsrooms were issued with the notorious “temnyk” –
instructions on how stories should be handled. But many in the media fear self-censorship has taken the place of state control. Add to that the fact many major news outlets are owned by big business leaders with their own agenda and perhaps the wait seems even longer for the kind of investigative
reports that could unearth the ins and outs of the way into parliament.
“Just like all things in Ukraine, everything is relative,” says one news editor on reporting after the Orange Revolution. “We are seeing that it doesn’t depend on politics but it does depend on the owner.”
Last but not least, there’s the sad fact Ukrainian journalists are still persecuted for doing their jobs. Reporters Without Borders’ latest report on the country cites threats and physical attacks, including one on a reporter who exposed corruption in political parties.
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