Tent city protest at Ukraine parliament enters fourth week

The tent city protest blocking the street in front of
Ukraine’s parliament enters its fourth week today. Several hundred protesters
held a rally on Nov. 12 at St. Michael’s Square in central Kyiv demanded that
parliament adopt an impeachment procedure and legislation to establish an
independent anti-corruption court. “We’ll give them until Dec. 3,” said former
Odesa regional administration head Mikheil Saakashvili, among the protest’s
leaders, as reported by the pravda.com.ua news site. “If they don’t approve
(the bills), we’ll gather the people and declare a ‘people’s impeachment’.”

Later that day, Saakashvili added that the “people’s
impeachment” will apply to “the president and the government altogether.” In
further comments, Saaskashvili insisted that he was aiming for “an upheaval of
the consciousness, not an upheaval of the state.” Among the protest’s leaders
were MPs Yuriy Derevianko, Yuriy Levchenko and Serhiy Leshchenko, a member of
the Poroshenko Bloc but outspoken critic of the president.

Zenon Zawada: The tent
city protest will continue until the first week of December, at minimum. The
government seems to have taken the approach of leaving it alone, in the hope
that it will lose momentum and become an irrelevant distraction on the
political landscape. For the protest to maintain its relevance, it needs a
political or social event to rally the public around. We believe the parliament
has been avoiding a vote on any critical matters, including the law on
reintegrating Donbas, for the very purpose of avoiding giving the protest
renewed momentum. In the meantime, the protest leaders will be on the lookout
for a new cause to rally around.