When I first arrived in Kyiv, a local journalist asked if I liked playing golf. When I said that, wonderful (and British) a game as golf was, I preferred table-tennis, she noted it down. “Very democratic,” she said. A couple of weeks later, I flew back from a visit to the UK using a budget airline. A Ukrainian colleague was impressed. “Democratic,” he said.
I like the way people in Ukraine use the word “democratic”. In addition to its political meaning, it is often used to describe activities which are “of the people” or “normal”. Other times it means “non-elitist”. Or, like so many other words of praise, sometimes it simply means whatever the speaker approves of.
I’m reminded of this whenever one of Kyiv’s awful traffic jams is compounded by the passage of a VIP convoy. The usual procedure is to switch off all the traffic lights along the route of the VIP, and place traffic police at every junction to manage the flow of vehicles until the convoy is near. This in itself is a sure-fire way of creating traffic chaos across broad swathes of the city. When the VIP approaches, all traffic is stopped until the convoy, usually of half-a-dozen vehicles, has passed. Then the traffic lights are switched on again and, eventually, traffic resumes its fitful progress.
Of course, it’s vital that Ukrainian VIPs are protected and that they arrive at their meetings on time. But there are a variety of ways of getting convoys through a city quickly, ranging from special lanes and road closures (highly disruptive to other road-users) to nimble pairs of motorcycles shutting down junctions the moment a convoy passes before racing ahead to the next set of lights (less disruptive). Some people argue that the latter is safer, since routes can be switched at any moment to create uncertainty for potential assassins. It could even be argued that the less disruptive of other road users a convoy is, the more “democratic” it is. Or is it?