No nation’s people should be expected to tolerate, to accept, to simply live with and resign themselves to a government that is corrupt and exploitative, that uses the administrative structures of power it is charged with managing, not as a means by which to strengthen the nation and improve the lives of its people, but rather as a way in which to enrich themselves and their select group of friends, family members and associates.
The Ukrainian people should not be an exception in this.
Whatever its original impetus, a set of eminently appropriate and well-founded demands have clearly emerged from the current Ukrainian People’s Protest Movement.
These might be specified as follows:
To live in a nation altogether free of the sort of systemic and institutionalized corruption so pervasive as to constitute its own total way of life, a rampant, metastasizing illegitimacy that can only stifle, corrode, and finally destroy the hopes and dreams of its people, rendering a populace without credible expectancy of a worthwhile future, depriving it of all capacity to project, invest in or even conceive of any nominally promising tomorrow to look forward to.
To live in a nation the established authorities of which do not feel themselves entitled and justified in engaging in violence, in coercive force and/or unwarranted imprisonment against its own people in response to any declarations of dissent or opposition, a nation which therefore adheres as a matter of course to a just rule of law, rather than rule of personalities or of factional interests.
To live in a nation not wholly vulnerable and prey to the pressuring and bullying tactics of any of its neighbors, or of any fellow nation-state, and therefore retains the capacity to engage in a decision-making process regarding its own economic and socio-political arrangements on its own terms, properly in line with and reflective of its own needs and considerations, rather than acceding priority to the interests of other nations.
To live in a nation which, for instance, does not incarcerate opposition figures simply as a means by which to remove them from the realm of electoral politics and thereby eliminate any chance they might launch a successful challenge to the standing order.
To live in a nation that is sufficiently strong, stable and flourishing enough so as to both allow for and be purposefully receptive of the free, creative energies of its people, to make constructive use of their efforts and exertions, in a way which not only aptly rewards each and every individual for their own efforts, but that also ensures that the beneficial consequences that collectively accrue from the concerted efforts of everyone involved will effectively circulate throughout the body politic as a whole.
Pavlo, a Ukrainian
Photo by Patrick Chellew
