"PORA-Reforms and Order" National Convention

On Sviatoho Mykolaya, December 19th, the political block "PORA-Reforms and Order" had a convention at the Ukraina Cinema on Horodetskoho St. The block consists of PORA (Kaskiv), the Reforms and Order Party (Pynzenyk), and front man, heavy-weight champion of the world: Vitaly Klitschko. I visited the convention for a couple hours as a guest. The speeches were based on the simple premise that the revolution on the stage on maidan, and the revolution among the people standing on maidan were two different revolutions. PORA-RandO are positioning themselves as the harbinger of the ideals of maidan and the only pro-democratic, oligarch clean, party in the parliamentary campaign. Klitschko delivered a measured but inspirational speech about how he chose to align himself with the party because it is the only party free of connections to business and free of oligarchs. In other speeches specific examples of corruption in the Kyiv City Administration were given and it was announced that PORA activists putting up politically charged stickers were detained by police. The stickers have the faces of Kuchma, Yanukovych, and Kivalov with the caption "PORA Spytaty - Chomu vony ne sydiat" (meaning why are they not "sitting" in jail). A guest speaker, the opposition leader from Azerbaijan spoke of the movement of democracy in the post-Soviet space. See my photos from inside the convention. Also the party list has been published here. PORA-Reforms and Order information can be found here.