The end of the rainbow: a guide to the colour revolutions

In contrast to the storming of the Bastille, the spate of revolutions which have flickered across our television screens in the last two decades have tended to adopt brand images connected with colours or plants. Most of them have wilted as quickly as they flowered. Whether Burma in 2007, Armenia in 2008, Tehran in 2009, any pro-Western demonstration is now immediately given a brand. And ‘revolution’ is proclaimed even if everything stays the same as before.

The ‘rose revolution’, Georgia, 22 November 2003

The ‘rose revolution’ in Georgia turned on a disputed election. Street protests were organised by a group called ‘Kmara’. The opposition leader, Mikheil Saakashvili and his supporters started their march on Tbilisi from under Stalin’s statue in Gori and forced their way into the parliament clutching roses, thus overthrowing the incumbent president. Weeks later, Saakashvili was elected with a suspicious 96.24 per cent of the vote. Since then, his reputation has become tarnished. Last year, an EU report concluded that Saakashvili had started the conflict with Russia in 2008 when Georgia launched its military attack on South Ossetia: the subsequent stationing of Russian troops in Georgia’s two breakaway provinces will ensure that the country will never now join Nato.

The ‘Orange revolution’, Ukraine, November 2004

By the time presidential elections came up in Ukraine, the ‘rainbow revolutions’ were on a roll. The main protest group, ‘Pora’, was a carbon copy of Kmara. The West encouraged the divided Ukrainian opposition to unite behind one man, a boring stooge called Victor Yushchenko. He broke out in what looked like a bad case of acne during the campaign, which was presented as a poisoning attempt orchestrated by the Kremlin. Western media went wild but during the subsequent five years of Yushchenko’s presidency, no prosecution has ever been brought for an attempt on his life, nor for the massive electoral fraud of which he accused his opponent at the time.