I have been wondering this question for a really long time now, as the main Pora! site I visited hasn’t been updated in quite a while. There has been news of the new student youth movement in Russia called Red Pora!, but that news is sparce.

Thankfully, we have orange revolutionary Dan McMinn. He has a great post up outlining the history of the youth movement and where Pora! is going.

The Basic Ultra-Abridged Description of Pora

Pora sprung up in fall of 2004 as a primarily youth protest organization focused on the election of 2004. During the Orange Revolution, Pora played a big part in helping to organize people, coordinate them, and keep everything working in a peaceful manner. This is too their credit.

Pora is still around, or at least the people in the organization are still around. However, during the events in the fall, a second group calling itself Pora also appeared (the original being “Black Pora ÄruÅ” the newer one “Yellow Pora”). Since January the split between the two Poras has made it difficult for the group to establish a Pora party line even though they now have a political party ÄruÅ because at least some would like to get into the Parliament ÄruÅ in the March 2006 election.

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So They Probably Won’t Be Significant, So What?

The reason why it matters what happens to Pora is that if Pora or some other Orange Revolution-style opposition group does not establish itself as a legitimate form of opposition, the opposition Ukraine will have will continue to be Yanukovych and other foolishness. Yushchenko’s government will continue making populist moves to win support away from the Yanus, and I am optimistic about their chances of being able to beat the Yanukovych crew next March. But along the way, they will have sacrificed a lot of fiscal responsibility.

It would be much better for Ukraine if Yanus were just a handful among the opposition, so that his name and his foolishness were not inextricably entwined with all opposition in the nation. It would be better for Ukraine, if his odd bunch of misfits were grouped together with a rabidly anti-Yanu radical youth movement type party when people voice opposition to certain policies by Yushchenko. (as I’m happy a lot of people on Maidan seem to be doing about the strange happenings with Zvarych) It would help shunt aside Yanu into the irrelevance he deserves and let the country move on.

Creating a Toxin-Free Political Climate

As Zerkalo Nedeli has also said, good democratic government needs good opposition. The Yushchenko government has already started initiating a lot of populist reform, the economic support for which is questionable. The kind of opposition that, in more democratically developed countries, helps hold the government to account for its policy decisions is needed for Ukraine to become one of those governments.

Under Kuchma, being in the opposition was a more basic decision. The things you had to oppose were obvious, like Kuchma’s attempts to take away Ukrainians’ right to vote for their President. They were too fundamental to constitute “policy concerns”.

The threats were more basic, too. The opposition was not faced with problems appealing to voters, they were faced with having to withstand government persecution of them and their businesses and altruistically ignore government enticements to defect.
If Yushchenko’s government manages to leech enough of the toxins out of the political climate that even rukhies like Pora can survive, it will be a big step forward for the country.

I encourage you to read the entire post and the links within it. What Dan says about Yushchenko’s tendency toward populist politics is absolutely true, and it has rather been the rule insofar with the current revolutions going on around the world. The problem with populism is, of course, the “tyranny of the majority” effect which can eventually lead into a soft despotic socialism of sorts. As organized democratic institutions are built, the tendency should be able to shift away from populism into a race to see who can effect free-market, free-society changes the best.

I recall something that Daniel wrote once, to paraphrase, that it is not healthy for a society to be in constant revolution. Well, that is exactly what back-and-forth populism is, and we see it still to a large degree in those countries having recently revolted. If people are to be be able to get back to their lives, and be able to make them better, then these institutions need to be built quickly and soundly. Pora! has, possibly, a chance at arousing a “democratic opposition,” and certainly it is needed. President Saakashvili of Georgia now faces an opposition comprised almost completely of government officials from the previous regime who are bent on coming back to power. That situation should not become a reality in Ukraine.