DEMOCRACY IN UKRAINE

Arrival in Ukraine

After several hours of travel from Fort Collins to Kyiv, Ukraine, my eye lids are feeling pretty heavy. Here's the travel schedule I just completed.

Left Fort Collins at 5:30A yesterday (Tuesday) morning. Arrived at DIA, boarded a plane for Chicago, spent a couple hours there then boarded a Boeing 777 for Frankfurt, Germany. We flew into the next day landing this morning at 5:30A. During the next three hours in Frankfurt, members of the IRI delegation began arriving. We introduced ourselves to one another and began getting acquainted.

The flight to Kyiv was full. Almost everyone on the plane was part of an election monitoring mission from various organizations and from many countries. It seems the Europeans are sending quite a lot of observers for this election. I saw a guy with a CU baseball cap on and introduced myself. Sure enough, he's from Colorado and on his way to do the same thing I'm doing. He works for the US State Department.

The bus ride from Kyiv's Boryspil airport to downtown Kyiv took about 40 minutes. The people joining me on the IRI mission have a great depth of experience in Ukraine. For example, the first US ambassador to Ukrane is on our team. His name is Dr. Roman Popadiuk and he's now the Executive Director of the George Bush Presidential Library in Texas. In total, there are 35 delegates and IRI staff on our team. We had great conversations on the bus and with so many Ukrainian experts, we all are getting up to speed on the Ukrainian political landscape pretty quickly.

It was instantly obvious there's an election here. Even on the airplane from Frankfurt, the Ukrainian-language newspapers carried big headlines and stories about various campaigns. In the airport parking lot, many cars were decorated with election materials — flags, ribbons, painted windows, etc.

On the bus ride into Kyiv, we saw campaign banners all over the place. Some were hanging from bridges and apartments. Every now and then, we saw some people waving gigantic flags on the side of the roads bearing the colors of some political party. Long strands of blue and white plastic tape (sort of like police barrier tape) were strung through the trees. Blue and white is the color of the Regions Party — the party of Victor Yanukovich who lost the presidential race to Victor Yushchenko in the Orange Revolution of 2004.

We arrived at the Premier Hotel, checked into our rooms and had a couple hours to rest. Then we met in the lobby, got back on a bus and headed to the most ancient part of Kyiv along the Dnipro River for dinner at a Georgian restaurant.

More introductions were made, a few toasts were raised to democracy, to the people of Ukraine, to the women of Ukraine (it's a Ukrainian tradition that the third toast is always dedicated to women), to the USA, to Liberty, to the end of lenghty toasting. We enjoyed dinner and received some brief instructions about the week's agenda.

The bus returned us to the hotel about two hours ago. I've been checking in with my office for a few work-related items, reading emails and reading through our IRI Delegate Briefing Book to get ready for our first set of meetings which start at 8:20A tomorrow. Right now it's 3:12P in Denver, 12 minutes past midnight here. Good night from Kyiv.

Former U.S. Congressman Bob Schaffer, a member of the Colorado State Board of Education, is an election observer for the Parliamentary elections in Ukraine. The election is coming up this Sunday, March 26.