The Problem with the Poor being Allowed to Vote in Ukraine.

Trawling through the information on the Internet about the supposedly democratic opposition of The Other Russia, I chanced upon a quote from a certain Yulia Latynina who stated in an article for the Moscow Times on 10 February 2010, in regards to the Ukrainians returning the anti-Yushchenko candidate Viktor Yanukovych, that

Letting Poor People Vote Is Dangerous

Some quotes have appeared here and it is, perhaps, necessary to get the quotes from the Moscow Times which one has to subscribe to. The article was once available but has disappeared from view. Many people put it on their websites because they were surprised at the fact an advocate of democracy in Russia could argue this.

It is an astonishing admission by a journalist who is supposedly "liberal". As if democracy is only good if it gives the result that its ostensible promoters actually desire.

It could be one thing for certain parties to be banned as wanting to overthrow democracy, as did the Nazi Party.Yet few who take democracy seriously would say that in the USA in 2010 the low level of educational attainment of many American citizens should bar them from being able to vote, not least given the level of poverty in some parts of the USA too.

Yet in accordance with doublethink, Latynina's sort are 'democratic' because she believes in democracy and those who fail to measure up to the requirements of voting the correct candidate in what was a free and fair election simply should not be able to exercise the right to vote,

"Viktor Yanukovych’s victory in Sunday’s presidential election — not unlike the victories of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Adolf Hitler — once again raises doubt about the basic premise of democracy: that the people are capable of choosing their own leader.

Unfortunately, only wealthy people are truly capable of electing their leaders in a responsible manner. Poor people elect politicians like Yanukovych or Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Poor people are capable of feats of bravery and revolution. They can storm the Bastille, overthrow the tsar or stage an Orange Revolution. But impoverished people are incapable of making sober decisions and voting responsibly in a popular election.

In other words, if the people vote the wrong candidate or against those preferred by the West, in particular the USA where she received on December 8, 2008 the Freedom Defenders Award by the US Department of State, then perhaps they should not be allowed by her standards.

Interestingly, Latynina has also been a member of the 2008 Committee since its inception, a group that includes Garry Kasparov of The Other Russia, a group that sees no problem in having active Fascists such as the National Bolshevik Eduard Limonov as a key strategist.

That makes farce somewhat of Latynina's democratic credentials no less than it does with Kasparov who, like Latynina, is essentially a fanatical neoconservative devoted to the cause of "regime change" by Machiavellian fraud and force across the globe.

An alternative take on events has been provided by Paul Robinson, a professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa who wrote,

"While many will no doubt see it as a source of consternation, the election of Viktor Yanukovych as president of Ukraine is really a cause for celebration. The defeat of the leaders of the Orange revolution, Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, is actually good news.

In 2004, Yanukovych briefly triumphed on the back of electoral fraud. In 2010, he has beaten his opponents honestly in an election deemed by international observers to be free and fair. This alone amounts to a significant political change for the better.

For Ukrainians, the constant squabbling of the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko years will finally come to an end. For the West, the Ukrainian election offers a welcome opportunity to reassess the nature of the "colour revolutions" of the early 2000s.

The Orange revolution in Ukraine, the Rose revolution in Georgia, and the Cedar revolution in Lebanon gave rise to a myth of democratization in which the "masses" were rising up against corrupt elites. The ongoing protests in Iran have similarly encouraged some to believe that a Green revolution is also in the offing. But the colour revolutions were never quite what they seemed.

In Ukraine, for instance, the "revolutionary" leaders, Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, were high-ranking members of the existing system. Furthermore, even in the final election that defeated him in 2004, Viktor Yanukovych still managed to gain over 40 per cent of the vote.

The Orange revolution was decidedly not an uprising of the entire Ukrainian people against its government, but rather a temporary victory by one party in a political struggle within a deeply divided nation.

The Orange revolutionaries proved to be incompetent rulers. The same goes for their colleagues elsewhere. In Georgia, for instance, Mikheil Saakashvili's government has proven disastrous, provoking war with Russia and what is almost certainly the permanent loss of two of the country's provinces.

This seems far more balanced than the unhinged diatribe of Latynina. Yet how on earth she can be seen as a liberal is beyond belief, at least by the standards of "Democracy Promotion" that the USA has put forth as Russia's destiny through the National Endowment for Democracy.

Latynina might well have despaired of the Ukranians voting the wrong person but comparing Yanukovych was hysterical and does nothing to promote liberal democracy: if anything it proves the shrill intolerance of such supposed "liberals": if indeed they are that.

To date Yanukovych has not since his election proposed embarking on a universal racial war like Hitler did and it is bizarre that Latynina put Salvador Allende in the same category of "mad dictator" as Hitler when he was one of the few left wing romatic "revolutionaries" to come to power through the ballot box who did not have dictatorial ambition in 1973.

Yet General Pinochet did when he was backed by the USA in its global war against Communism and despite the fact Allende received no aid from the Soviet Union: curiously it was some supporters of Yeltsin in 1993 who called on him to be another Pinochet in 1993 when crushing popular protests against the ruinous effects of shock therapy.

It is curious that Latynina did not link Hitler together with Pinochet, as both have been termed Fascists, though Pinochet was not a radical and would be better compared with somebody such as General Franco and his regime in Spain.

Why somebody such as Yulia Latynina can be put forward as some sort of youthful face of Russian liberalism simply discredits the term, as well as newspapers such as Novaya Gazeta which once was the home of Anna Politkovskaya.

Such people are a total embarrassment, do nothing to promote liberty and only discredit the concept as something that can be used as a ruse of the oligarchs to unseat those who do not let them have greater control: hardly democracy and hardly likely to appeal to people in Ukraine or Russia.