Our Ukraine ran a poor third in the March 26 Ukrainian elections because of an expensive cell phone, a luxurious BMW and the fact that the symbols of the Orange Revolution - believed to belong to the people - were franchised to the President's son.
In other words, Our Ukraine was a victim of poor public relations; but worse than that, poor parenting.
Of course, this is an oversimplification. There was a gas crisis. The economy took a tumble. There were overblown expectations that simply were not and could not be met. There was the vote of 'no confidence' in the government.
But the underlying cause was the spotlight in the summer of 2005 on Andriy Yushchenko, the President's 19-year-old son. His perceived spoiled-kid extravagance, and the president's Little League papa-style tantrum added up to an amateurish public relations disaster.
President Victor Yushchenko came out of the Orange Revolution with huge political capital and the international image of a corruption-buster. Given his cratered face due to a poisoning attempt on his life, he was a walking, talking martyr for the cause.
Less than a year later, his party finished third among the five parties to break the three percent barrier for entry to the Rada. However, it was an embarrassing third, way behind Yulia Tymoshenko, Yushchenko's co-hero of the revolution and the prime minister he fired.
Often, it is not an honest policy mistake that clings to a politician like stale cigar smoke, but the silly and the nonsensical. Such was the case with Andriy Yushchenko's expensive Vertu mobile phone, his use of a $155,000 BMW, and his penchant for ordering $1,000 bottles of champagne and leaving $300 tips at nightclubs.
This, in a country where the average monthly income is about $150, and where his father, the president, earns only $4,667 per month.
While natural gas issues can be complicated and politics at a rarefied level tend not to be the topic of kitchen table chit-chat, young Andriy's perceived extravagances didn't compute with Ukraine's version of Joe Sixpack.
These are people who have to earn their daily bread. People who plant potatoes on small dacha plots to see their families through the winter. People like the pensioner who drives his beat up Lada "street taxi" around Kyiv in hopes of supplementing a meager stipend from the government.
A $10,000 Vertu telephone (which Andriy protested had been lent to him)? He might as just as well have had the Hope Diamond dangling from his ear.
But, kids will be kids, and the resultant cloudburst from this public relations fiasco possibly could have been turned into a mere rain shower. However, the resultant explanations were contradictory and the president, in fact, presided over his own thunderstorm.
President Yushchenko's reaction was more than unseemly.
It was not very smart.
Yushchenko attacked the publication that first broke the story, Ukrainskaya Pravda, calling its reporter a "hit man" and publicly suggesting his son "finds that restaurant check, shoves it under the journalist's mug, and then sues." This was the online publication which employed Georgy Gongadze, the journalist who died attempting to unearth corruption in government.
Then, the other shoe dropped. The story broke that the symbols of the Orange Revolution had been registered as trademarks by the president's son.
We're talking the Ukrainian word "Tak!", or yes, and the downward-facing horseshoe, symbols that had stood for honesty and integrity, and helped overturn a fraudulent election. They were symbols carried by thousands who braved the cold, snow and rain to protest.
In spite of it all, in midsummer 2005 this Titanic could have avoided the iceberg. It would have been spin of historic proportions, but if sincere, could have softened the damage. The best way to avoid a public relations disaster is to take steps to prevent the causes of a pending disaster. However, once the stories broke, Yushchenko should have held a news conference with his son at his side. What follows might have been the statement:
The father: "Many of you are parents. Often as parents we are disappointed. He should have known better because he was raised better. But, I blame myself for my son's injudicious and extravagant actions. He has returned the BMW and the cell phone. He has promised me he understands the seriousness of his actions. He is sorry. I am sorry."
The son: "My father is right. I knew better. I lost direction and was not thinking clearly that my deeds would be interpreted by some as a betrayal of our revolution. I have grown up through this incident, and I appreciate the press and others pointing out to me how wrong I was. I am sorry. You will not find me in this situation again."
There is an old tale suggesting that a battle and then a war was lost because the consequences of poorly shod horses led to various other catastrophes. Symbolically, this contributed greatly to what happened to Our Ukraine in the March elections.
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