This week's government showdown in Kiev is proof that the oligarchs are
still firmly in control.
After hours of
public bashing by lawmakers in the session hall of Ukraine’s parliament, Prime
Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk rose from his chair, visibly nervous. These were the
last minutes before a no-confidence vote that he and his government were likely
to lose. Nevertheless, he did his best to make his case: “We inherited a
plundered country, with the Russian army and Russian boots marching on
Ukrainian territory.
We had no army, no money, no public administration. But we
kept this country together. I ask you to respect that,” he said, clenching his
fists. But the speech seemed to fall flat. This would surely be the end of
Yatsenyuk and his cabinet, Ukrainians all across the country thought, as they
followed the scene yesterday on live television and on the internet.
But suddenly,
Mustafa Nayyem, a well-known reformist legislator, saw a sight that must have
chilled him to the bone. Moments before the vote, dozens of legislators from a
range of parties, all affiliated with powerful oligarchs Rinat Akhmetov, Ihor
Kolomoiskiy, and Victor Pinchuk, suddenly left the session floor — they weren’t
going to vote against the government. Nayyem rushed to Twitter to warn the
country: a backdoor deal had been reached, and the no-confidence vote would
likely fail.
But it was too late. The
voting had already started.
Just hours before
the vote, most Ukrainians had been sure that Prime Minister Yatsenyuk was
finished: his popularity ratings were dismal and
international pressure to remove him for failing to tackle the country’s
massive corruption was rising. In recent weeks,
one top reformer after another kept resigningfrom the
government, citing the impossibility of making any progress in a system that
was still corrupt at the very top.
Finally, on
February 16, President Petro Poroshenko himself called for
Yatsenyuk’s resignation, officially ending their two-year post-revolutionary
alliance. Yatsenyuk and his cabinet were due to defend the performance of their
government over the previous year on the parliamentary floor. After hours of
heated debate, the gathered lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected the report as
“unsatisfactory,” by 247 votes out of 339. The success of a no-confidence vote,
due to take place just 10 minutes later, seemed a foregone conclusion.
But in a maneuver
reminiscent of “Game of Thrones,” the campaign against Yatsenyuk collapsed in a
matter of minutes, leaving Nayyem — and everyone else — with dropped jaws.
First came the walkout. Then, almost three dozen legislators from President
Poroshenko’s party failed to support the no-confidence vote. In the end, the
no-confidence motion gathered just 194 of the 226 votes it required. Yatsenyuk
and his government had survived. After the vote, most of the gathered
legislators were dead silent, as if stunned — and the minority that opposed the
motion erupted in cheers.
Ukraine’s rent-seeking
oligarchic elites were free to celebrate their latest and greatest victory
against the forces of reform since the 2013 Euromaidan revolution.
Foreign observers,
politicians, and diplomats started complaining to me immediately afterwards:
“Again with that chaotic Ukrainian politics!” Well, let’s make it clear once
and for all: Ukrainian politics is anything but chaotic. There are no party
lines, no real policy debates, no ideological clashes: just cold-hearted vested
interests and short-term alliances between various oligarchic groups. The
second you accept that, and stop seeing Ukrainian politics through the
political lens of the developed world, you’ll see what I see: a simple pushback
by oligarchs against internationally backed efforts to finally rid the country
of the corruption that inspired the Euromaidan.
For too many of
the current elite, a new prime minister could mean a shake-up of the whole
government, and possibly a restart of much-delayed reforms that would threaten
their financial interests. Or it could also mean more competition for resources
— a further takeover of some of the top positions in government by business
interests connected to President Poroshenko’s ruling party. Either of these
scenarios would be a loss for the vested interests. Preserving the status quo,
in which everyone’s territory has already been carved up and divided, was the
optimal equilibrium for Ukraine’s top kleptocrats.
As usual, the interests of the
Ukrainian people themselves barely registered on anyone’s agenda.
In Ukraine, it is
utterly naïve to search for any dichotomy between the crooks and the reformers
along party lines. Recent investigative reports and scandals have exposed what most
people have long already known: that clusters of corruption thrive inside
almost every party, including that of President Poroshenko, Prime Minister
Yatsenyuk, the Opposition Bloc, and others. Further, the various corrupt forces
successfully cooperate with each other, even when they are not “formally”
allied politically. For example, a productive alliance that protects corruption
within the energy sector reportedly exists between
political and business elites tied to the fugitive former President Yanukovych,
current President Poroshenko, and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk.
The same is true
of the reformers: you can find brave fighters for change not only within
heavily corrupt parties but inside the corrupt government as well: from the
anti-corruption crusader Serhii Leshchenko of President Poroshenko’s party to
reformist Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko. Unfortunately, these reformers are
outnumbered by the kleptocrats.
The West shares
the blame for the reformers’ failure to win the fight for change in Ukraine. As
direct stakeholders in its future, with billions of dollars already invested
through bailout loans and aid, the country’s foreign partners and supporters
have been remarkably idle in pushing for specific reforms. Many have closed
their eyes to exactly how much power the vested interests among the
post-revolutionary political elites still wield. Western policymakers and
diplomats have rallied for the well-spoken Prime Minister Yatsenyuk while
ignoring his almost two-decade background in dirty Ukrainian politics and
reports of his close allies’ alleged involvement in corrupt
schemes.
Not a single
question was asked when President Poroshenko staffed his administration with
former business partners and friends with dubious backgrounds while refusing to
sell his own vast corporate assets, as he had promised. Crucial initiatives led by
reformers within the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of the Economy, and the
Ministry of Infrastructure have not found enough articulate support from
abroad.
Now, as the
political crisis mounts — and, perhaps sensing weakness, Russia-backed
separatists probe the
country’s defenses — Ukraine’s Western partners may find themselves facing much
higher costs to fix the mess. Ignoring complex crises hasn’t worked very well
for the developed world in recent years, and Ukraine is just another
illustration. It’s true that in recent months we’ve seen growing pressure from the
country’s international partners demanding real reforms. But that should have
happened two years ago, not two months ago.
There are still ways for the
West to avoid a full-blown Ukrainian collapse. First, it must fight hard
for the remaining reformers: as long as the hands of powerful people like
Minister Jaresko or anti-corruption crusaders like Mustafa Nayyem and Serhii
Leshchenko aren’t tied, there’s a chance that the country’s development will
continue.
Secondly, the West
shouldn’t fall for the cheap theatrics of a “political cleanup” that are being
propagated by the country’s ruling elites. In an apparent alliance with various
political groups in parliament who have ties to the oligarchs, President
Poroshenko and his Solidarnist party have built up suspense by keeping
allegedly corrupt officials in place, accumulating negativity around two
specific people — Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Now, by publicly
bashing the former and dumping the latter, these elites
hope to release the pressure and convince the public and the international
community that a cleanup is underway.
But after two years of empty
promises, neither Ukrainians nor their foreign partners should be satisfied. In
Ukraine, it doesn’t matter who runs the government or the General Prosecutor’s
office. With Yatsenyuk and Shokin or without them, the alliance of oligarchs
and corrupt officials will stand strong — unless we stop paying attention to
personalities and demand real, structural reforms.
The resignations
of these officials are irrelevant if they are not followed by criminal
prosecutions, and then systemic changes. For example, has anyone investigated
Prime Minister Yatsenyuk’s ties to his close ally Mykola Martynenko, after
Martynenko’s resignation from parliament following an international corruption
investigation? Nope. What was the fate of President Poroshenko’s business
partner and a lawmaker Ihor Kononenko after his
alleged corrupt practices triggered a wave of resignations among reformists in
the government? Nothing.
Then there’s
Shokin himself, the disgraced prosecutor general, who has failed to pursue a
single high-profile corruption case, neither against officials of the former
Yanukovych regime nor against today’s highly-placed crooks. Since his abrupt
resignation on February 16, his duties are being performed — at least for now —
by his loyal and devoted deputy, Yuriy Sevruk.
If this charade
doesn’t stop, the system will just keep replicating itself without ever
changing — and the hopes of yet another Ukrainian revolution will have been
betrayed.
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