26 September 2014
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko participated in his first nationally televised press conference on Sept. 25, in which he presented his “Strategy 2020” program of more than 60 reforms and programs that will be simultaneously launched. They include reforms in the judicial system, law enforcement bodies, national security and defense bodies, state administration and the state medical system. The government plans anti-corruption efforts, decentralization, deregulation, tax reform, developing entrepreneurship, a program in energy independence and replacing 70 percent of state employees. The success of the reforms will be determined by 11 strategic indicators. Among them is Ukraine joining the top 20 nations in the world in ease of doing business.
The Ukrainian government needs to conduct “tectonic” reforms or face another social revolt and being abandoned by the West, Poroshenko said. “We have the political will and there’s no road back,” he said, adding, “Only reforms can renew the state that’s not capable of meeting the demands of its citizens. The alternative is total collapse. Only reforms are capable of satisfying the revolutionary demands of Ukrainian citizens. The alternative is powerful protest.”
Poroshenko said he’s not ashamed of anyone on the list of parliamentary candidates of the Poroshenko Bloc. He denied news reports that his party’s candidates include former Party of Regions MPs or those who voted for the dictatorship. Among the criteria for being nominated was not having a corrupt past, he said. The president said he would not have allowed his son to be nominated for the party list because “there would be too many questions.” Instead Oleksiy Poroshenko will compete for a single-winner, single-mandate district, where there will be “an honest and uncompromised struggle.”
Prosecutor General of Ukraine Vitaliy Yarema said on Sept. 25 he will appoint an investigation of alleged threats against journalists of the nashigroshi.org news site after they published an article revealing alleged corruption involving his deputy prosecutor, Anatoliy Danylenko. At the same time, Yarema said he has no complaints about Danylenko’s performance, who explained to him the source of the real estate and property that was questioned in the news article. “It seems to me it’s a bit twisted around,” Yarema said. “There’s a targeted campaign against one person and just as we began to prepare cases against influence individuals in oil and gas extraction, such questions begin to be raised.”
Zenon Zawada: Whatever “tectonic” reforms that will take place will have to be undertaken by the next government and parliamentary because those in place currently aren’t much interested. Poroshenko is utterly correct in stating the tectonic reforms are, in essence, a do-or-die situation for Ukraine. But the failure to undertake them already is what’s disturbing many in the Ukrainian public.
A big factor holding back reforms is inertia. The political elite is used to doing things a certain way and it’s quite hard for them to behave as European-style politicians. Yarema’s declaration of firm allegiance to his deputy, without the investigation even beginning, is the perfect example of how loyalty trumps the issue qualifications in Ukrainian politics. We don’t believe Yarema’s claim that nashigroshi.org wrote a hit piece because it’s funded by the Renaissance Fund, not oligarchs in the energy sector.
As for the proposed reforms themselves, the establishment of performance indicators is the first real effort by a Ukrainian government to hold its employees to some kind of standard. Yet the presence of indicators alone won’t bring about the needed reforms. Poroshenko claims the political will is there, but his appointments – and some of the candidates representing his party – indicate that much of the old system of allegiances, patronage and clans still remains in place. In terms of reform, the winter will reveal whether the will is truly there (after the new parliament and Cabinet emerge).