Election fatigue

Half of me really wants there to be a general election in the UK before the end of the year. After all, although I understand that we have a parliamentary system and we vote for parties rather than presidents, it does still feel a little weird that Mr Brown ascended to the prime minsiterial throne without any kind of contest, and his leadership could still do with a bit more legitimacy. Plus, in my slightly disturbed way, I actually quite enjoy staying up into the early hours watching the election results come in.

But overall, I can't say I'm that enthusiastic, largely because I'm already suffering from election fatigue. Last Sunday, there was yet another election in Ukraine, less than 18 months after the last one. In fact, the place has had a bit of an 'election campaign' feel almost continuously for the last three years. When I was first there in 2003, there was a strange atmosphere. On the one hand, there was a sense of optimism that the country was clearly beginning to stand on its own two feet at last after the economic meltdown and social collapse of the 1990s. At the political level, on the other hand, it reeked of stagnation, even decay , as the Kuchma regime had become thoroughly entrenched in corruption and full of dirty tricks. You could sense that people weren't happy about it, but they also seemed fairly resigned to it.

Within a few months, however, things had changed quite significantly. As the presidential elections at the end of 2004 approached, the pre-election vibes was not so much in the air as clogging up your lungs. Watching TV was particularly unpleasant, because all ad breaks (which seem to last at least 10 minutes) were saturated with party political adverts, most of which were negative, aggressive and/or utter nonsense. Every billboard had been plastered by the unattractive faces of middle-aged, largely fat men who had got far too used to being in power (Yulia Tymoshenko being the obvious exception). Even among the many people who wanted change, the mood was as much desperation as it was hope - or perhaps, desperate hope.

Then, of course, there were falsifications, protests, and the so-called Orange Revolution. You don't need me to tell you about that bit.

Though what most people, certainly outside the country, didn't understand at the time was that part of the deal that led to the 'success' of the Orange Revolution was an agreement to shift round the whole political system and hold parliamentary elections, with a newly powerful prime minister's job at stake. This meant that the entire time from Yushchenko being officially made president through to this parliamentary vote was like one big long election campaign. The elections themselves, back in March 2006, were free and fair, if quite badly organised. Then came three months of extremely unpleasant horsetrading, ending up with Yanukovych being made PM. Yin to Yushchenko's yang, however, Mr Yanukovych certainly was not, and the relationship between Pres and PM rumbled on from worse to worser for months, until a few months ago when Yushchenko finally stopped being such a wuss, managed to disband parliament and called new elections for the end of September 2007.

Olga and I went back to Kyiv for a few days in early September, and to be honest, that was enough to give me election fatigue. To be fair, this probably has a lot to do with the fact that I was rather burned out by Ukrainian politics by the time I left Kyiv earlier this year, i.e. it didn't take much to tip me back over the edge. But still, the same old ads, the same old billboards, etc etc...it was enough to turn me right off.

Despite it all, however, most Ukrainians still seem to care about politics. The experience of recent years has been that the economy can continue to grow sharply despite the chaos in government (or, many would argue, because of it...the theory being that if the government were allowed to govern with no distractions, they'd almost certainly balls everything up, so these distractions are actually allowing businesses to get on with things with less 'administrative pressure' than before). People have thus learnt that politics is one thing and daily life is another, and they doubt the twain shall ever meet, but they still care about politics and they still vote - the 'against all' vote still got less than three percent.

Whether these elections will prove any more conclusive or more conducive to the running of the country is still anyone's guess. The results suggest that if Yulia and Yushchenko could bury the hatchet, they could form a coalition that could just about hold...possibly. But everyone expects that it'll be a fair few weeks before we get to that stage, because every party and their dog is going to contest some of the election results to try and maximise their position and/or screw things up for everyone else. In particular, the fact that the SPU is wobbling around the 3% hurdle means that Moroz is likely to put up a particularly nasty fight for his right to bugger things up. Along with most of the rest of the country, I hope he fails miserably as soon as possible. But I'm not holding my breath...