Comedian as President, pregnancy in prison

By Louis Odion

There are some telltale signs of a perishing society, observed Alexander Solzhenitsyn. These, according to the Russian literary immortal and Nobel laureate, include acute scarcity of great statesmen and decline in arts.

Conversely, a profound message must be intended when voters choose to go far outside the traditional power caste to anoint the least rated as new leader. It could only be an ominous sign that the existing political class had become toxic to national health, hence the vigorous call for the dissolution of the discredited hegemony.

In expressing their own pent-up rage at the weekend, Ukrainians chose perhaps the most telling symbol: they settled for a comedian (Volodymr Zelensky) as political undertaker of incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire chocolate tycoon. So, the nation of 44 million people now seem to be saying that it is better to have a certified jester ruling over them than being daily irritated by a bad clown masquerading as a philosopher-king.

By sweeping over 70 percent of the vote, hope has, therefore, risen in the former Soviet satellite state for the fixing of a broken system; for a new generation of leaders committed to weeding out self-serving oligarchs and ending the culture of political corruption.