The celebrated, if rather pompous, UK professor of history, Timothy Garton Ash, repeated a now sorrily familiar canard on the BBC World Service
on Sunday when he said that what had happened in Ukraine is “definitely a
revolution”. The next day I read in the International
New York Times that the revolution in Ukraine may need to be “better
represented” in the about to be formed interim government.
When analysts comment about Yemen it is sometimes said that the Gulf Arab-backed
interim deal that changed the president, and consequently the government, did not represent the “revolutionary forces”. That is perhaps a better formulation.
The “revolution” in Ukraine hasn’t really affected the apparatus
of the Ukranian state, even if it has weakened the state’s writ. Despite Yanokovich having something akin to a democratic mandate, the revolution obliged him to depart and has aided the chances that his nemesis Tymoshenko, a failed
premier, will take over. In the meantime the speaker of the old parliament keeps
the presidential chair warm.
The revolution hasn’t affected the structure and membership of
the police, intelligence services and the military, but it has succeeded in giving
the interior and defence ministers the sack.
The revolution has seen self-appointed groups enforcing
popular justice on the streets of Kiev, but is being actively resisted in the east
of the country.
Egypt is going through a comparable (non) revolution. In
either case was it the popular will or the shadow state that wrought the
change? In Ukraine the oligarchs didn’t like the former president’s method of
crowd control, in Egypt the military initiated two changes of president in two
years and are about to finish the job by once again assuming the country’s political
leadership. However perhaps one of several differences is that, while Egypt cannot
control the Sinai, it doesn’t any longer fear the loss of part of itself to a
powerful neighbour.
2 comments:
Where do you stand on Revolution no. 9?
My feeling is that it could have been dispensed with if a more Burkean approach to creative change had been adopted. This would mean that the Fab Four would still be finessing their beat group and balladeering schtik and perhaps the Egyptian military would have partially incorporated the Muslim Brotherhood under the rule of Mubarak's son Gamal.
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