Walking across Kiev’s Maidan square in mid-March this year, the barricades covered by banners and flowers reminded me of Cairo’s Tahrir square in 2011.
Both now have their place in history for popular uprisings against a ruler, and for many symbolise the hope of a new era.
In Egypt the hopes of renewal have been shattered. In Ukraine the risk of failure is great. But there is a crucial difference between the two. In Egypt, an agreed roadmap for reforms was always elusive, while Ukraine’s European ambition means that the shape of necessary democratic reforms is long-known. The European institutions should give no less than tough love to Kiev now, to make sure these reforms finally take place.
From the start Egypt’s transition was overshadowed by a lack of consensus on what democracy in Egypt could look like. For the Muslim Brotherhood it boiled down to a question of electoral majorities.
But many opponents of this most successful Egyptian party could only think of judicial machinations and eventually sheer brutality to halt its march to power. Ukraine’s outlook is brighter in this respect.
With citizens demanding the country to become a European democracy, the requirements to do so provide a detailed roadmap on what its democracy should look like: a system of majority rule, tempered by checks and balances and safeguards against concentration of power, in line with the European Convention on Human Rights and numerous other legal obligations and political commitments that Ukraine has accepted since its independence in 1991.
The full article can be found on EUobserver.com
Picture: Ukrainians mourn Maidan casualties after the fall of Yanukovych in February (Photo: Christopher Bobyn)
