USAID has withdrawn public broadcasting grant, Alasania says

The U.S. Agency for International Development has withdrawn
a grant to the National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine to hold
presidential debates after the pre-emptive Jan. 31 dismissal of its chief
executive officer, Zurab Alasania. Little time is left to organize them and
they might not occur at all, he said in an interview with Deutsche Welle
published on Feb. 6.

Regarding the president’s role in his dismissal,
Alasania said he doesn’t believe Poroshenko gave a direct order. “But there are
some very strict guys who are close to him,” he said. The document explaining
his dismissal cites “not highlighting the president’s people” as a reason,
Alasania pointed out. “But I didn’t think the president began all this,” he
added. “That would mean incriminating himself.”

Zenon Zawada: It’s well understood that whoever initiated Alasania’s dismissal would
have had to have gotten the president’s tacit approval. And we are also
confident that the president is not interested in debating Yulia Tymoshenko,
who is very aggressive in her style. She is also willing to make sensational
statements and biting accusations, which isn’t Poroshenko’s rhetorical style.
So besides getting someone more compliant at the helm of public broadcasting,
the president will have also gained from Alasania’s dismissal if the debates don’t
occur at all. The last time presidential debates occurred was in 2004.