 Persons of the Year 2005 Glen Willard |
It's done. The Ukrainian Observer has named Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko our Persons of the Year 2005. Seems this is the year for multiple award winners: witness Time magazine's multiple awards to Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono as their "Persons of the Year"; also they stretched and named former United States presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush as "Partners of the Year". Of course Time has the whole world to choose from. We limit our selection to those having a significant impact on our new nation Ukraine.
In our first award for the year 2003 we named Dmytro Biriukovych. In 2004 we selected the People of Ukraine. In that first instance we were awarding Captain Biriukovych for his courage in sailing around the world in his schooner Bat'kivshchyna and on his mission "Discover Ukraine". His was a more or less one-man effort (though he had some, though not much assistance) to let the world know of Ukraine and to improve or heighten interest in it. An update on the captain appears in our December 2005 UO (See "A Visit With The Captain," pg. 26).
The year 2004 saw much electoral turmoil in Ukraine, and that continued into early 2005. Yet it was the people of Ukraine by the hundreds of thousands and their impact by appearing on the streets of Kyiv and other cities of Ukraine that had the most impact on the country in that year. The peoples' efforts and spirit were truly heroic and had impact that was enormous.
This year Time seemed to concentrate on "Good Samaritans" in their selections. And in the past their choices have honored such emblems or icons as the computer as well as such villains of history as Adolph Hitler. While we're sure there are many good Samaritans in Ukraine, doing many good works both individually and collectively, we found none that had a truly significant impact or effect on Ukraine in 2005. And no one person had so negative an impact on Ukraine so as to secure the award. Now, collectively a few of the what we call oligarchs and maybe even an electoral candidate or two contributed some negatively to Ukraine this past year. It's just that they individually, or even collectively, didn't pass muster on the "impact test".
In the UO's selection process we did solicit suggestions from our Readers as well as others around the country. We received some interesting responses. For instance, many concerned the circumstances surrounding the reacquisition and resale of the steel mill Kryvorizhstal. That transaction, of course, has tremendous impact on Ukraine's budget and thus importance to Ukraine' finances. So Lakshmi Mittal was
a nominee and even the Mittal company. And while foreigners, and even we think a company, can certainly be considered, we think that in this instance that our selections, the president and the former prime minister also had significant influence on that transaction.
New Prime Minister Yury Yekhanurov was a nominee of some, and he is a worthy. But assuming his position relatively late in the year, his influence was perhaps not so much as it will be in the future.
Valentyna Semenyuk as well as Petro Poroshenko were mentioned, though not by the same persons, of course. In somewhat the same vein as Petro was a suggested nominee, so too was Viktor Yanukovych.
The range of selections was interesting. Our pub poll survey (see page 28 in this issue) is somewhat representative of the suggestions and the reasons for them.
Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, though, were the most mentioned. Yulia was perhaps mentioned more than the president. This is borne out by public opinion polls that, for whatever reasons, have the replaced prime minister more popular at this time than the president.
We at the UO listened to the recommendations and considered them all. We nevertheless take responsibility (blame) for our joint selections of the two people. But we don't actually consider the selections a "joint" selection. It is more a dual (perhaps "duel"?) one. It is not a secret that the relationship between the president and the former prime minister has been
a difficult one. Indeed our past cover last month showing Ms. Tymoschenko throwing a snowball (rather softly it seemed) at the president and titled "Friendly Fire?" is a reflection of this.
So above when we distinguish joint and dual, we're attempting to say that each independently is our Person of the Year. They are two choices, independent of each other.
Incidentally, we made our choice for Person of the Year rather late. Had we decided earlier, we wouldn't have editorially desired to have back-to-back cartoon covers of the same people. And while our cartoonist on the current cover shows
a smiling Yulia and Viktor on top of a nice cake, we don't mean to imply that the two have resolved all their issues.
Perhaps our cover does signify a thought that more cooperation between their now competing factions will be necessary to the future success of Ukraine.
In 2005, the president and the former prime minister worked together and accomplished some things. Yet from the beginning there were rumblings of trouble. There was infighting among the president's secretariat and staff and those who worked for Ms. Tymoshenko in her government. From one side, accusations of too much populism and too many promises. From the other, that the president was traveling too much, acting too much the Ukrainian-statesman role, but not paying attention to the business of government.
With the infighting escalating there were apparently some self-centered trading of personal interest, some corruption... or at least charges of such going on. It was perhaps necessary that when all the turmoil began to boil over into plain and public view that the president had to take charge and dissolve the government and appoint a new one. We give him credit for that difficult decision.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the hard-charging prime minister would clash with the supporters of the more laid-back president. But perhaps too, it was fortunate for Ukraine that the two initially were together in beginning the effort that became the Orange Revolution. That the revolution has lost a little of its glow, not little because of the problems between these two Persons of the Year 2005, does not take away from the importance and impact these two had on Ukraine in 2005.
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Read also previous issue' articles:
Tourism: Ukraine's Greatest Lost Opportunity
Cars, Cars - and More Cars
The Long Slide Into Instability
Sex, Money and the Modern Dacha
How to Stop Worrying and Love the Property Market
Separating Chornobyl
Fact and Fiction
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