Finance and health ministers to be replaced today, MP says

The recently
appointed ministers of finance and health have submitted their resignations,
according to a Mar. 29 Facebook post by MP Iryna Herashchenko, among the
co-heads of the European Solidarity parliamentary faction. The parliament’s
leadership met that day with the leading candidates to replace them, she added.
The leading candidate for the finance ministry is Serhiy Marchenko, she said,
who served among the deputy heads of the President Administration under
Poroshenko in 2018-2019. Before that, he served as deputy finance minister in
2016-2018.

Meanwhile, the
leading candidate for health minister is Maksym Stepanov, who served as head of
the Odesa regional administration under Poroshenko between 2017 and 2019.
“Zelensky’s bench of backups is so little that it can’t even offer anyone to
replace the failed ministers,” said Herashchenko.

Lifelong energy
ministry official Olha Buslavets is the leading candidate to become its new
head. Between April 2005 and February 2020, she had served as the general
director of the energy markets directorate, the fakty.com.ua news site said, an
unusually long tenure in a single position for a state official. Buslavets has
close relations with billionaire Rinat Akhmetov and Prime Minister Denys
Shmyhal, who served as an executive at several companies belonging to Akhmetov,
the pravda.com.ua news site reported on Mar. 27.

Zenon Zawada: This is the latest embarrassment
for the Zelensky administration, needing to search for heads of key ministries in
less than a month after
appointing them (and amid a viral pandemic). It’s understood that any minister
needs at least three months, but more half a year, before gaining enough
political traction to implement any agenda. So either these two, Umanskiy and
Yemets, were utterly incapable in fulfilling the president’s agenda, or they
had separate agendas of their own. (Yemets had been accused of corruption by
pro-Western MPs, but that alone often isn’t enough to lead to dismissal in
Ukraine. Umanskiy is reported to have disappointed top officials with his work
on the budget sequester, the pravda.com.ua news site said.)

Their dismissal so
soon is certain to undermine the public’s trust in Zelensky. So is the fact
that in replacing them, he is relying on officials who served the
administration of Petro Poroshenko, whom Zelensky harshly attacked and
ridiculed during the election campaign last year. It’s clear that Zelensky is
having a difficult time finding qualified people to serve in government. But at
least he’s willing to eat crow and hire people from the rival camp if it means
getting the job done. All three leading ministers interviewed were mentioned by
name in an agenda of today’s session being circulated on Facebook.

The consideration of
Buslavets reflects an interest of both Zelensky and Shmyhal to curry favor with
Akhmetov to offset the influence exerted by billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky. This
way, Zelensky won’t be dependent on Kolomoisky, particularly when pursuing
polices that the oligarch opposes, such as cooperating with the IMF and
approving the so-called anti-Kolomoisky bill, prohibiting the return of failed
banks to their former owners. So far, Zelensky seems to be fulfilling
Kolomoisky’s wishes (particularly in the scandal surrounding former PM
Honcharuk’s dismissal). It’s not clear if he wants to steer away from him,
though getting Akhmetov involved in government will give him more options.