As I suspected, the Yanukhonvych camp did pay protestors, as Globe and Mail reporter Mark MacKinnon writes on his blog:
A few thousand people, waving the blue flags of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich's Party of Regions, plus a few thousand more waving red Communist and Socialist banners, showed up on Kiev's Independence Square - the very site of the Orange Revolution in 2004. They're protesting President Viktor Yushchenko's controversial decision to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections .. They're pitching tents and promising to stay indefinitely.
... but so far it's a lifeless demo.... One woman told me she was there because she'd been paid 50 hrivnya (about $10 US) to stand on the square and wave a blue flag.
But the news services are reporting that thousands more Yanukovich supporters are headed for the capital from his power base in the Russified east of the country. ...
Full story here.
What a great blog! Bookmark it or, better still, subscribe to the RSS feed (as I've done).
I've always respected Mark as a reporter with integrity and insight. His writing is eminently readable as well as highly informative, and is utterly devoid of any propaganda or personal political bias.
He's just written a book called The New Cold War. It's available at his blog, and I'm sure will be a great read.
Check it out here.
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I first met Mark during the OR and found him to be a decent guy and fair reporter.
That's the impression I've consistently gotten, every time I read something he's written. Which is why I'm such a big fan.
I hope they are not giving "incentive" bonuses to the Constitutional Court to vote in favour of the Bandits.
If Moroz could be bought for $300 Million, Individual MPs $3-$8 Million, how much would a Constitutional Court Judge go for?
Frightening thought.
Very frightening indeed.
For me, the underlying question is, whose money is it? And if it's home-grown money, how was it made ... given the market economy is still new to Ukraine and most ordinary Ukrainians are struggling to get by?
Those are, naturally, rhetorical questions.
There is no market economy in Ukraine now, nor has there ever been, except maybe for the black market in Soviet times which was about as close as you could get to a functioning market economy.
For that matter, IMO there is no real market economy anywhere in the world, but that's another discussion for another place.
Let's just hope the political crisis in Ukraine can be resolved without bloodshed.
thanks for the reference!
You're most welcome, Olechko! :-)
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