“Euromaidan” organized by Poroshenko in 2013 (if we think deeper, what a contradictory name it is!) succeeded. Saakashvili’s initiative, in my opinion, has little chance to win. And the reason is not that Ukraine’s incumbent president is a more decent man or a brighter revolutionary than Georgia’s former leader. I think – the opposite. And furthermore, Saakashvili’s services to his fatherland, Georgia, are indisputable, even with all his vices.
I think, the issue is the existence and the absence of the political agenda. Integration into the European family is a political agenda, which manifold society layers of Ukraine were defending in 2013: the average class, bureaucracy, intelligentia, youth, nationalist circles, which are quite powerful in some parts of Ukraine. What happened after Poroshenko came to power, is another issue. It is a separate topic. However, as in Armenia, in Ukraine similarly, the hostility of grouchy lumpens towards stealing authorities, the wish to get rid of them, the aspiration to break them in pieces are not an agenda, they are emotions, the political significance of which is equal to publications on the internet.
The primary tool of political populism (but not agenda) is the fight against corruption. “You are poor, they are rich, inasmuch as they have eaten your money”, and what other thesis is more dear to lumpens? Saakashvili plays that role with artisticism and experienced, developed tricks specific of him. Everything from this perspective is wonderful, but if the active, as they say – “pasionar” layers of the society do not join the fight, the whole energy of the revolutionary steam engine will be expressed in a strong whistle alone.
The West is evidently dissatisfied with Poroshenko (who, as it came out, is an ordinary post-Soviet oligarch) and aspires to “pull Ukraine together”. Saakashvili can play a role of a catalyst to some extent in that processes. However, Ukraine is not Georgia, the scales are different, the difficulties of the issues are different, different is, eventually, the significance of those two countries to Russia and the West. Therefore, it is difficult to expect fast positive changes in that country, by not humiliating, of course, what has been done throughout recent years.
And hardly carrying out a revolution with pensioners and unemployed will succeed.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
