Abstract
Transformations brought about by revolutions do not last if people forget that democracy is not a result, but a process.
The first decade of the millennium saw democratic uprisings in several former Soviet Union countries. Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan were later joined by Moldova, as people took to the streets to demand free and fair elections. Democratic governments came to power. But the developments proved that nothing is irreversible, nor can it be guaranteed for good. So what can societies in transition learn from the so-called ‘colour revolutions’?
In Kyrgyzstan, economic pressure leads to a high level of self-censorship in newsrooms, where hard topics are avoided in order not to irritate media owners
Ukraine: From orange back to the blues
Much of the world became familiar with the word maidan, a Ukrainian term of Arabic origin meaning ‘square’, after the events in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Kiev in late 2004. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians from all around the country gathered to protest against rigged presidential elections – and stayed until their demands for a fair re-vote were heard. The leader of the united democratic opposition, Viktor Yushchenko, won and was declared president in 2005. He served until 2010.
These events, known as the Orange Revolution because of the colour associated with Yushchenko’s campaign, inspired great hope for democratic changes, not only in Ukraine but in other post-Soviet countries as well. And many people felt disappointed after Viktor Yanukovych, the very candidate who led the opposition to the Orange Revolution, won the next presidential elections in 2010.
Many analysts agree that the main reason behind the Orange coalition’s failure was the constant conflict between its two leaders: Yushchenko and the charismatic Yulia Tymoshenko, who would serve as prime minister twice (in 2005 and 2007-2010).
As a result of this political weakness, the coalition could not tackle serious problems such as the corruption among authorities and ineffective public services. And, as well-known US political commentator Francis Fukuyama said in an interview with the Ukrainian Civic Movement CHESNO (translated as ‘honest’), published in July 2012 by the popular website Ukrainian Truth, there are other long-term problems in Ukraine, such as ‘the oligarchy, the economic clans, the shadow controls over the government.’
Election poster of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Donetsk, Ukraine, February 2006
The leaders of the revolution paid the price. Yushchenko completely lost his electoral support (he managed to get only 5.5 per cent of the vote in the 2010 elections). And Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2010 after she was found guilty of abuse of office for signing a gas deal in 2009 that burdened Ukraine with an excessively high price for Russian gas.
‘But the Orange Revolution was not defeated,’ says director of the Institute of Mass Information Viktoria Siumar in an interview with Index. ‘It was Yushchenko and Tymoshenko who lost, because they did not manage to set the interests of the public above their personal ambitions. But the Orange Revolution started irreversible changes in society. We learned that it’s not enough just to change the government; nobody will solve problems for you, and nothing will really change unless people take responsibility and believe their own actions matter.’
But Yanukovych seems to have learnt from his mistakes as well. He remembers the crucial role media and journalists played in 2004, when independent information was available on television and emerging Ukrainian internet and mobile communications outlets helped coordinate the democratic protests. As a result, the new authorities have tightened their grip on the media.
Censorship – which had been forgotten after the Orange Revolution – returned. According to monitoring by Telekritika.ua, an NGO dedicated to media analysis, the number of news reports broadcast by national TV channels in Ukraine that appeared to have been censored in some way increased by 30 per cent in 2012. In November 2012, a scandal broke out after direct political censorship at the UNIAN news agency became public: journalists had been banned from mentioning the name of the president in any negative context.
According to Oksana Romaniuk, Ukraine representative for Reporters Sans Frontières, the number of physical attacks on journalists has increased dramatically – from just seven cases in 2006 to more than 50 in 2012. Impunity is still a problem. Only three of the over 50 cases led to criminal proceedings against the assailants.
What is less open or visible, but no less dangerous for free speech, is hidden censorship brought to bear through administrative procedures or economic pressure on the media. It is expected that new rules for TV frequency allocations will result in 90 per cent of regional TV stations halting terrestrial broadcasting from 2015 onwards. At the same time, more than 80 cable operators across the country have used different pretexts to exclude the independent TVi channel, which is critical of the authorities from their packages. Journalists accuse the government of attempting to stifle the station.
‘We don’t have a real media market as more than 90 per cent of Ukrainian media are not profitable and thus depend on subsidies from their owners, who interfere with their editorial policy,’ Oksana Romaniuk told Index. ‘In general, journalists feel more pressure now than before the Orange Revolution. But at the same time, we have social networks and online media, where free speech flourishes. The pressure has increased, but the possibilities to resist it have increased as well.’
Kyrgyzstan: Days of flowers and freedom?
In its early years of independence, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kyrgyzstan was famously called ‘an island of democracy’ in Central Asia. The country introduced democratic laws that, among other things, guaranteed media freedom and opened the door to foreign investors. But the turbulent years that followed saw freedom of expression continuously challenged by different groups in power.
Changes came about after two coups d’état: the ‘Tulip Revolution’ of March 2005 and the April 2010 revolution that ushered in President Roza Otunbayeva. Both revolutions saw corrupt presidents overthrown by popular uprisings.
The first revolt, in 2005, was described as relatively peaceful, although two people died and at least 100 were wounded in clashes, and Kyrgyzstan’s first president, Askar Akayev, was forced to flee the country and resign. But the second one, in 2010, took the lives of more than 70 people, who died in the central square of Bishkek.
It is true that there is more freedom in Kyrgyzstan after the two revolutions, and one can express one’s opinion on government performance more freely than before, Dinara Oshurakhunova, the head of the Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, told Index. The Kyrgyz parliament is now compared to an aquarium: all its plenary sessions are broadcast live on radio and anyone can attend any session. Kyrgyz citizens can access information freely and make their choices. By buying different newspapers and watching several TV channels, one can learn a lot about the government – and the opposition. However, this is really just because both own media organisations, which praise their owners and criticise their rivals with the same relish. So despite the large quantity of media outlets, it is not easy to find real hard-hitting journalism, with investigative and high-quality reporting.
The two revolutions highlighted the fact that the media are an important tool in the political struggle.
‘The most critical issues, such as inter-ethnic tensions, rigged elections or unfair court decisions are not covered’, Pavel Dyatlenko, a Bishkek-based political analyst from the Polis Asia think tank, told Index. ‘Freedom of speech is not sufficiently supported by economic development. Access to power resources and government service is corrupt.’
Due to the undeveloped advertising market, only a few media outlets have succeeded in becoming viable businesses in Kyrgyzstan, while the majority are donor-dependent. Most media companies are owned by individuals, whether politicians or entrepreneurs, while a few outlets are funded by foreign media support organisations. Economic pressure leads to a high level of self-censorship in newsrooms, where hard topics are avoided in order not to irritate media owners.
The web has provided new opportunities for free speech, as Kyrgyzstan has one of the highest levels of internet penetration in Central Asia: 40 per cent of its citizens are online, according to the International Telecommunications Union. People can talk openly, for example, on the Diesel Forum – one of the oldest and largest internet forums in Central Asia, with 134,000 registered active users. And in comparison to neighbouring states, this is a precious gift.
Moldova: Twitter and communists
Moldova was the latest of the former Soviet republics to follow the ‘revolution trend’. Civil instability that followed the parliamentary elections in April 2009 was marked not only by violence but also by the extensive use of technology. Not surprisingly, these events received the name the ‘Twitter Revolution’, as protesters who came out on the streets of Chişinău to stand up against alleged election fraud and who stormed the parliament and the presidential palace used social networking sites to coordinate their actions.
The unrest resulted in a new election that put an end to eight years of rule by the Communist Party and brought the Alliance for European Integration, a coalition of four centre-right parties, to power. The Alliance claims to promote European values, but in the past it has failed to practise what it preaches. While in opposition, the parties now in the Alliance used to accuse the communists, and the family of ex-president Vladimir Voronin (2001–2009) in particular, of appropriating all the major profitable businesses in Moldova and attempting to close down the opposition media (which never actually happened).
For the past 17 years, the situation in Moldova has been closely monitored by the Council of Europe (CE). It was the Venice Commission – a CE Europe advisory body made up of independent experts – that persuaded the Communist Party to hand control of several important state institutions, including the Central Electoral Commission and the Broadcasting Coordination Council, over to the opposition. But the ‘democrats’ are in no hurry to pay the communists back in their own coin, and instead maintain control over these bodies – thus providing the current opposition with grounds to accuse European structures like the European Commission and the CE of connivance with the government.
In fact, the ruling Alliance, in power since the 2009 revolution, is working hard to outdo the communists. The most vivid episode took place on 5 April 2012, when the pro-communist NIT TV channel was closed down without a court decision. The station’s programmes had been monitored by the government-controlled Broadcasting Coordination Council, which ordered it off the air overnight, leaving about 100 people unemployed – and depriving the country of its last opposition TV channel.
Most of the other national TV channels are controlled by one person: business tycoon Vlad Plahotniuc, who is the deputy speaker of parliament and a major de facto patron of the Alliance.
The outcome is that the current opposition does not get a lot of positive media coverage – or independent coverage, for that matter. Editorial policies are very much influenced by the political views of their owners – for instance, Plahotniuc uses the outlets he controls not only to attack communists but also, when it suits him, his partners in the Alliance, including the Liberal Democratic Party of Moldova of Prime Minister Vlad Filat, the country’s most influential politician.
But the country of the Twitter Revolution still keeps its internet free, thus allowing it to remain an important platform for free speech and open political debate. There are a number of active bloggers who often set the tone and put topics on the table for the media. Moldavians are also quite active in social networks, with Russia’s Odnoklassniki the most popular, and Facebook attracting the most politically active public.
How to finish a revolution
There is another common trend in several of the ‘colour revolution’ countries, as Orysia Lutsevych – a fellow at the think tank Chatham House – stated in a paper entitled ‘How to Finish a Revolution: Civil Society and Democracy in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine’, published in January 2013. The revolutions themselves were the result of broad civic movements, with people mobilising to demand change. But as changes seemed to be on the way, the level of civil activity started to decline. ‘Civil society in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine remains weak as citizens have little capacity to influence political developments owing to lack of engagement, clientelist networks and corruption,’ says Lutsevych. People’s participation in decision-making remains limited.
There is a need to understand that democracy and freedom are a path, not destinations. A path on which the whole of society has to walk.