Apathy grips hard-up Ukraine village ahead of polls [View All]

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: reuters

Tetyana Shevchenko is no longer proud she took part in Ukraine's 2004 "Orange Revolution" sparked by a rigged presidential election. In Sunday's poll, like many of her fellow villagers, she will not vote at all.
Five years after unprecedented street protests propelled pro-Western President Vikor Yushchenko to power, her life has only got worse, and ordinary people are embittered by politicians' unfulfilled pledges, she says.

"The worst that happened is that people have lost their faith in humanity," says the 53-year-old out-of-work shop assistant selling her modest household produce -- curds and sour cream -- on the roadside at her village of Buzova, 35 km (22 miles) from the capital Kiev.

She comes daily to the busy motorway to spend hours in biting frost selling dairy products to earn a few dollars to supplement her disabled mother's pension of 670 hryvnias ($84). Her paralyzed husband draws one of 1,200 hryvnias ($150).
"Yes, I was in Kiev's Independence Square then, and we chose Yushchenko. But what happened? Life is just so terrible in the village," Shevchenko said. "Whoever is elected this time, will he buy hay for my cow or pay for this expensive natural gas?"

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60F1Q320100116