Ukraine’s political circus

When it comes to messy politics -- and old-fashioned entertainment -- it’s hard to top the theatrics of the relatively young democracy in Ukraine. Here are a few choice moments from the presidential campaign that ended with Sunday’s runoff election:

* While on a campaign stop in the western city of Lviv -- an area typically unreceptive to his historically pro-Russia politics -- candidate Viktor Yanukovich had an embarrassing slip of the tongue, Ukrainian news media reported. Attempting to congratulate locals on their superior gene pool (peculiar enough given the region’s history of religious and nationalistic violence), Yanukovich accidentally congratulated locals on having the best genocide in the country.

* Yanukovich’s verbal stumbling is well-known; even his aides lament his struggles with public speech. So it was little surprise when he shied away from a televised debate against the polished, sharp-spoken challenger, Yulia Tymoshenko. Rather than miss out on the free airtime, Tymoshenko held the debate on her own, speaking to the nation for an uninterrupted 100 minutes. “Although he is absent from here, I can feel his smell,” she said of Yanukovich. “This is the smell of fear. I do not want a common coward to become the next leader of our nation.”

* In 2004, when Ukrainians took to the streets of the capital, Kiev, in the Orange Revolution, protesting against rigged elections and preventing Yanukovich from taking power, an elderly widow nicknamed Baba Paraska became a cultural icon as she dressed in orange and braved the cold to demonstrate. This election, she is hospitalized with a broken leg -- and being treated in a room full of Yanukovich supporters. Ukrainian media report that quarrels are erupting among the ailing women.

* A handful of topless women barged into a polling station early Sunday to protest “the end of democracy.” They showed up at a station where Yanukovich was scheduled to vote, but said they were not demonstrating against any candidate in particular. Clad in jeans, electrical tape crossing their nipples, the women shouted, “Stop raping our democracy,” witnesses said.

megan.stack@latimes.com