People’s Servant faction less unified and controllable, report says

The People’s Servant parliamentary faction, despite
having a dominant majority, has split into various groups led by informal
leaders and aligned with oligarchic clans, the pravda.com.ua news site reported
on Mar. 3. These groups have increasingly ignored the requests of the
President’s Office, despite having won the parliamentary elections solely based
on Zelensky’s popularity, the report said. Andriy Bohdan, the former head of
the President’s Office, was able to neutralize these tendencies and muster
votes for necessary legislation, the report said. “The system, whose creator
was Bohdan, wasn’t ideal, but it worked. However, it lost its functionality
after his resignation,” the report said, referring to his dismissal in mid-February.

“Such a scheme works, as long as there is a bad cop
and a good cop. If the bad cop leaves, two good cops won’t be able to resolve
anything. No one will listen to them alike. The (President’s) Office doesn’t
understand this yet, but the faction is splitting deeper. Keeping it together
and forcing them to work will be increasingly complicated,” the report said,
citing an anonymous source identified as close to Bohdan.

Even tomorrow’s vote for new ministers will require
compromising with the small People’s Servant groups that have emerged, the
pravda.com.ua news site said. “It’s come to the point that decisions are
reached at plenary sessions only because they gained votes from some of the
‘small’ People’s Servant factions. Owing to its internal discord, the
‘mono-majority’ has failed entirely on a mass of legislative initiatives of its
own government,” the report said.

Zenon Zawada: What’s
happening with the president’s parliamentary faction is natural considering
there is no ideological foundation and pragmatic agenda to unite around, other
than E.U. integration. There is no visible fight against corruption, no
structural reforms in the judiciary, and no improvement in quality of life,
while industry is suffering. There doesn’t seem to be any unity in the faction
even on how to resolve the war in Donbas. Moreover, the faction includes both
outspoken Russophile MPs, as well as MPs utterly hostile to Russia.

Andriy Yermak, the lawyer who replaced Bohdan as
President’s Office head, has his work cut out for him. Not only does he have to
lead the negotiations to find peace in Donbas, but he has to create a system of
governance on behalf of the president, any semblance of which disintegrated
with the departure of Bohdan. He had been the brains behind Zelensky, in
essence, and the architect of his presidency. We have been skeptical of
President Zelensky’s prospects for political success ever since his election,
and we remain so.