Three Sentences about the Radio

There is a law in Ukraine that requires all radio stations to fill 50% of air time with home made product. This means that my favorite rock radio station has to air tasteless shit half of the time, because there just isn't enough good Ukrainian rock music. Does this develop Ukrainian culture?

Can't Run From Politics

I never planned this blog to include any political posts, but who am I kidding - I'm a financial professional and a businessman, highly dependant on what's happening in the politics of Ukraine. So, I'll just have to comment.

As many people know, we recently had parliamentary elections, as a means of resolving a political crisis of sorts. And this Tuesday the newly assembled parliament finally (after two failed attempts, and with the resulting vote being 226 out of 226 required, not exactly the most convincing victory) has voted for Yulia Tymoshenko as the new Prime Minister.

You know, it's kinda funny to speak about her as the new Prime Minister. I mean, she was a deputy Prime Minister for fuel and energy for two years back in the pre-orange revolutions days. After that she suddenly emerged as an oppositionist in the early 2000's, then she's been one of the leaders of the Orange Revolution, and after the victory - she was Prime Minister. That's my point - she's been there already. And now that you've heard all the necessary ado - the angry stuff starts.

Angry Stuff

There are a few things that really annoy me in Ukrainian politics. And one of them is the kind of opposition Tymoshenko has built. It's the "if we're not in power, then nobody will" and "our voters are better than your voters" and "only I'm going to give you heaven on earth, just let me be PM" kind of opposition. But let's be more specific. Let's talk about just two things: how well she did last time she was in office and how she conducted her election campaign this year. But before that, a short word about the goldfish.

The goldfish

I once had a goldfish - not for a long time, even as goldfishes generally go. And this goldfish of mine used to live alone in this huge fish-tank that my friends gave me. So, I always told my friends that this goldfish had no short-term memory. She would swim from one end of the fish-tank to the other, and before she got there - she forgot about the beginning of the tank, and before she got back - she forgot about the end. So to my goldfish this fish-tank must have seemed indefinite - no beginning, no end. So all she did was sit in one corner and stare.

You know, there is a whole bunch of beautiful sayings about the cycles of life, about how life repeats itself and so on. But in the end it all comes to just one thing - we live in one borderless fish-tank. While we swim to the end  we forget about the beginning. And there are no memories, no cause and effect connections - nothing for the simple reason that they just won't fit in our head.

I used to preach proper politics (being not the worst informed person around these parts). I used to say that you can't believe in a good and honest leader surrounded by his crooked trustees. That you can't believe in one people being true democrats and others being only criminals, but some time ago I just saw it. We are going to live in this endless fish-tank, and even the recent past will just be erased from the goldfishes' memory.

Now you know about the goldfish, so I can tell you about running in circles with Ukrainian elections. As I said, Yulia Tymoshenko was a Prime Minister already. And you would think that people that voted for her again would remember about fuel crisis, reprivatization of KrivorizhStal with the following waste of the money earned on populist social payments, huge corruption scandals in Naftogaz and Ukrzaliznytsia, you know - the kind of stuff that affects lives. But here we come to the second point - Tymoshenko in opposition and her election campaign.

After she was ousted from Cabinet back after all the thins in the previous paragraph happened, I thought that her political career was over - but I have underestimated the will to rule in that woman, combined with total absence of self-criticism. She did lay low for a few months, and after that, slowly but surely, she started her usual propaganda technic, namely: 'I was so nice. I worked so hard to make you people happy. I want nothing but the well-being of the country, but THEY didn't let me. THEY we hampering my efforts, THEY were sabotaging everything I do'. And so on and on and on. You got the picture.

And when she saw that it was working, Tymoshenko immediately felt that she was on home ground - she was again the fighter against the corrupt and evil regime. I could go on for a little more here, but just let me make a couple of short points, and then quit the subject for today, for I'm not a professional political writer, and the post is getting kinda long.

By the estimation of street advertisers, during the 2007 election campaign Tymoshenko has bought out about 60% of all outdoors advertising space in Kiev, and believe me, that's a lot. And what did she promise?

1. During one or two years after she's electing she promised to pay out all internal debt on personal savings that remains after the collapse of Soviet Union. You see, after the USSR collapsed, all the savings people had in the state savings bank were frozen. And they still are. She promised to pay back all of that. To say the least it's impossible. It's more money that our whole national budget.

2. She promised to switch from conscription to professional army in 2008. Just like that - switch. I won't even bother explaining, just look at the other countries' experienced in going from conscription to professional army. It's just not done in one year.

To sum it all up, in my opinion, Tymoshenko as PM is probably the worst thing that could happen to Ukraine at the moment. The only positive thing about it (and it's only positive from a very strategic point of view), is that Ukraine really does have real political competition, backed up by the competition of strong business structures. And in my books this beats dictatorship any day.

 

Technorati Tags: news,Ukainian politics,political comments

So, EURO 2012

I’m not a huge football fan, to be frank, but I like to watch a good game from time to time. Nevertheless, I think I’m going to revise my attitude a bit, at least for the next 5 years – UEFA EURO 2012 is going to be held in Ukraine and Poland. Wow.

Looks like Mr. Surkis (on the picture) – President of FC Dynamo Kiev and Football Federation of Ukraine has reached one of his favorite goals and scored hosting of the championship. It seemed here that for the last few months Mr. Surkis, a very successful businessman (so successful, in fact, that he’s even called one of the Ukrainian oligarchs), has spent all of his time flying around Europe, convincing people that Ukraine and Poland were the best countries to host the football championship.

But apart from football, this gives a very interesting perspective to the next five business years. In order to host the championship well, Ukrainian infrastructure has to be considerably upgraded. Roads, public transport, lack of accommodation, new stadiums – all this can hamper successful hosting of the games, meaning that during next five years all this has to be developed to a stage satisfactory enough to accept all the international public that’s going to come over. That’s a lot of business.

Take hotels. There is a huge lack of them in Kiev, so huge, that if you would look at the prices, you’d notice that they are very high for a country with average monthly wage (the table is in UAH, divide it by 5 to get approximate USD amounts) of less than USD 300. And these hotels are on average pretty bad and always full.

Situation is no better in any other infrastructural field, so there’s going to be plenty of work for everyone.

First impression

I wanted to start with something descriptive. Something that would give a reader a first idea about how things work here. So here it is: a picture of the Borsypil International Airport (KBP) here in Kiev. Note the squared out part.

See the red fence and no cars driving around the only roundabout? For quite a while already traffic police blocks the roundabout near the airport, making it really hard to drop off and pick up people at the airport, and forcing drivers to actually break rules by having to drive the wrong way on the roundabout.

There seems to be no actual reason to do this. No important international guests, no imminent danger – it’s just being done. I thought a bit about the possible explanation, and the only one I could come up with is this: they do it to increase turnover of several paid parking lots located at the right and left of the terminal displayed.

This is where people first come to the country. So much for the good first impression.

Kiev Blog Begins

I got this idea about blogging in English - for fun, and maybe to get a bit out of the box. But as I already have a general blah-blah blog in Russian, I decided to give this one a subject. You know, a general topic that would distinguish... All that. So I started thinking about my interests, and I could only come up with being interested in people.

So to give this blog something to write about, and you something to read about, I’m going to write about people down here. And don’t be mistaken – I’m no jingo. None of that “Ukraine is a young and independent country with friendly people” nonsense. There are enough tourist web-sites out there without me.

P.S. Almost forgot. Please comment. Really.