Sharjah: The failure of the ousted Ukranian government to communicate with its people was the cause of the country’s current unstable situation, Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet leader, said yesterday.
Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, spoke at a session at the International Government Communication Forum, where he was the guest of honour.
“What is happening in Ukraine is the result of failure of the government to act democratically and resolve the problem with its their people,” Gorbachev, 82, said at the forum.
His comments came as the Ukraine Parliament named its new speaker as acting head of state, to replace Viktor Yanukovych.
On Saturday, protesters took over the Ukranian capital of Kiev and seized the president’s office as parliament voted to impeach him and call for fresh elections.
“The 20th century was the most cruel and bloodiest in mankind. We are living in an independent world but we do not know how to live in it. For this reason we have seen the consequences and they are becoming more dangerous,” Gorbachev said.
On a possible solution in Ukraine, Gorbachev said that honest, transparent and open dialogue with the people was the key. “You are expecting me to give an assessment of what happened, which I can’t give right now. But [people] must be involved in the transformation democratically,” he said, adding that the key reason behind the violence in Ukraine was an “interruption of Perestroika,” or the reforms structure, which he had initiated during the transition of the Soviet Union.
After becoming the Soviet president in 1985, Gorbachev pursued the policies of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika as tools of reform, which have been credited to be the catalysts for collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Speaking about globalisation, Gorbachev said it had taken a different route where only major developing countries have been able to adjust, while there were more losers than winners among the rest.
“Following the Cold War, we had a vision and hopes of a successful solution, but unfortunately it took a different path. Old conflicts are not being resolved and we see the emergence of new seeds of tension. Even the financial crises in 2008 should have been an alarm bell for all,” said Gorbachev, who won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the Cold War.
The last president of the erstwhile USSR said the root cause of the problem in a globalised world was the model of growth, which must be changed and adapted to gradually.
“Today we are living in a global world, where 60 per cent of the environmental system has been changed. Some of it cannot be restored. There is a lack of food, water and energy, as well as problems in migration and ethnic and religious strife,” he said.
