Cabinet decides to release regional funding, ignoring president’s request

The Cabinet of Ministers decided on Aug. 14 to release
financing for regional programs and projects, ignoring the request by the
President’s Office to hold back such funding. The resolution orders the Finance
Ministry and Regional Development Ministry to provide funds since Aug. 1 for
regional programs, particularly in small towns and communities, from the State
Regional Development Fund. “The financing schedule is supposed to ensure the
ability to timely conduct tenders and conclude projects that were begun,” said
a Cabinet statement.

The President’s Office sent a letter dated July 23
requesting that Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman hold back the distribution of
regional funding, the pravda.com.ua news site reported on Aug. 16. The same
day, the President’s Office released a statement to the news site explaining
why it made the request. “The representatives of the old government – concluding
their tenure and understanding that they can’t reach agreements on corrupt
schemes with the new government – are trying to create all the conditions for
claiming budget financing,” the statement said. “The goal of the president, as
the guarantor of the constitutional rights of citizens, is to prevent the
fulfillment of this negative scenario.”

Ukraine’s new convocation of parliament should need
only two days to elect the new Cabinet, Andriy Gerus, the president’s
representative to the Cabinet, said in an interview with the glavcom.ua news
site published on Aug. 16. That implies the first meeting of the new Cabinet
could occur on Wednesday, Sept. 4. The ninth convocation of parliament will
hold its first session on Thursday, Aug. 29, as decided by a meeting of a
parliamentary group in early August.

Zenon Zawada: The remnants
of the Poroshenko administration (led by Groysman) are a source of enormous
frustration for the president’s team, which is eager to get rid of them and
start working on their new policies. Besides this conflict with the Cabinet,
the National Anti-Corruption Bureau reported on Aug. 17 on Prosecutor General
Yuriy Lutsenko interfering with its efforts to submit its investigative
findings of corruption in the customs sphere to prosecuting authorities.

We expect this ongoing friction between the
Poroshenko and Zelensky teams to continue until the new Cabinet emerges, likely
in the first week of September. Afterwards, we expect efforts to proceed in
criminal prosecutions of key Poroshenko administration officials. The failure
to convict at least a few top officials will be a disappointment for the
public.