A contrived coincidence

Ex-president Kuchma continues to dish out pianos. On October 14 he gifted an instrument to Solomia Krushelnytska Music Boarding School in Lviv. Here is the preamble. “I turned 75 this year. I decided to mark this event by presenting all No.75 schools with a piano. I am glad that children have an opportunity to play this instrument,” Leonid Kuchma said in Lviv. In his words, he has already gifted these instruments to 40 schools, but “the events that began to occur in Ukraine somewhat slowed down the presentation of these instruments.”

Are the gifts with a viral lesion effect too “dear”?

“Kuchma is the architect of an oligarchic system, who has no right at all to emerge in the Ukrainian space,” Vitalii Shabunin, chairman of the Corruption Counteraction Center, comments to The Day. “He’d better shun publicity, for he is supposed to be harassed. Kuchma behaves like a ‘society lion’ and attends international negotiations on behalf of God knows who. Unfortunately, a certain stratum of our society is still taking a rosy view of Kuchma. This reveals immaturity of a certain category of people. Against the backdrop of war, Mr. Kuchma has become, for some reason, an acceptable character in Ukrainian public life. But it is a wrong thing, for, let me say it again, he created an oligarchic system in Ukraine and all those people who have almost destroyed our state.”

Before accepting gifts from the ex-president, no matter how tempting they may be, you should think twice about the consequences of this step. For the “architect’s” gifts automatically make you part of the morbid system he created.

Incidentally, gifting pianos to schoolchildren is a good thing, but what has the Kuchma family, one of the richest in Ukraine, done to help this country in wartime? In response, the ex-president said that “it is unrealistic to return Crimea” and told about his “peacekeeping” efforts to freeze the conflict in the Donbas a part of which Ukraine no longer controls.

But there was also another side of Kuchma’s visit to Lviv. Among those present at the ceremonial reception in honor of Ukraine’s second president were Lviv’s Mayor Andrii Sadovy and ex-chairman of the Lviv Oblast Administration Mykhailo Tsymbaliuk. This stirred up indignation among public activists in social websites. They began to speak about servility – and not only this.

“The Lviv mayor and Samopomich party leader Andrii Sadovy made a gross blunder today by solemnly receiving the former president Kuchma, who had destroyed Ukraine, and allowing him to present a Lviv music boarding school with a certificate to buy a piano,” writes Oleh Soskin, director of the Society Transformation Institute, in his blog. “How can one take gifts from Kuchma’s hands? Naturally, Sadovy made an exhibition of himself. It is like an individual who had been working hard for years and then flushed all that he had made down the toilet. It is the same as to invite Kuchma to your house. This country had to suffer so much, the people rose up in a revolution against Kuchma in 2004, and Sadovy suddenly welcomes Kuchma, the creator of a gangsterocracy regime. Is this really Samopomich? Sadovy must awaken and see what he is doing. For he positions himself as a Christian and a Greek Catholic but welcomes a dictator against whom the people, including Sadovy himself, fought.”

We asked Andrii Sadovy to comment on the situation. “I did not meet Leonid Kuchma at the airport or accompanied him during his routine visit to Lviv,” the Lviv’s mayor says. “I only came to the Krushelnytska Music Boarding School for the instrument presentation ceremony. I was obliged to do so under the protocol as the city’s No.1 official who must be present at the events in which the state’s No.1 officials, even former ones, are taking part.”

I wonder if the mayor would likewise welcome Yanukovych if he came to Lviv with a balalaika or an accordion. Besides, protocol is intended for the topmost political leaders who are still in office. Where is it written that protocol is also about former ones? On the other hand, in the conditions when society occasionally carries out “people’s lustration” via the trash can (and Kuchma has a notorious image), he was to receive the guarantees of a comfortable sojourn in Lviv. As we see, he did. On the surface of it, we are told that it was an extempore visit. But in reality it was a prearranged, contrived, “coincidence” (“a piano in the bush,” as a Ukrainian idiom goes).

Another important point. As is known, the Lviv mayor’s political party, Samopomich, is running for parliament. This party’s chief trend is new educated personalities who oppose the past and the old rules of the game in politics. I wonder how this correlates with Kuchma who is the main personification of the old system. It is a serious blow to the really new and worthy people in this political party. We must draw conclusions.

It cannot be ruled out, either, that by deliberately paying this visit Kuchma wanted to see for himself that he would be denied nothing – even if the receiving side knows well about his past but is not saying this out loud. Or, maybe, he wanted to use this visit to scorn those who dare say this out loud. Someone will perhaps say it is an exaggeration, all the more so that no court has handed down a ruling. And why has no court done so? It is a good idea to recall the visit of Viktor Pinchuk to the High Specialized Court on the eve of a Gongadze case hearing. Shall I go on?