Many, many times this blog has stated quite bluntly that reforming
Ukraine relies first and foremost upon reforming the political system and
machinery – for without that reform will be slow, disjointed, unconsolidated
and dysfunctional – if at all. Changing the faces, be they old, new, corrupt
or as pure as the driven snow matters perhaps less than reforming the system
and machinery within which they all must operate.
Once again, as is his want, Prime Minister Yatseniuk is blaming the
Verkhovna Rada for stymieing much needed reform. This time, the Prime
Minister laments the Verkhovna
Rada’s obstructiveness when it comes to strategic State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) that will not
be privatised but require quality management and the independence from the
State to turn these subsidy, recapitalisation and bad debt write-off corruption
pits into entities that produce profits for the State.
“State-owned companies of a strategic importance are
to remain in state ownership, but the management system there is to be fully
changed. Independent directors, presenting not the interests of the state, but
the interests of the state-run company, who are responsible for this, are the
basis for forming the new state companies management system.”
And he is right, albeit he is telling only part of the story. The
problem is that the machinery that runs the Ukrainian political system in Kyiv
is not conducive to efficient nor much more importantly accountable decision
making – and when designed it was deliberately so.
Firstly there is the Presidential Administration which seems to do far
more duplication of work that is charged to, and the responsibility of the
Cabinet of Ministers, than it does that would and should be expected of a
Presidential Administration. Lord forbid that the Cabinet of Ministers
actually work without micromanaged input, and all to frequent interference,
from the Administration of the President.
However, if the Presidential Administration is micromanaging, then the
Cabinet of Ministers apparatus takes things to a whole new definition of
micromanagement (yet maintaining a lack of accountability).
It would be no exaggeration to state that the Prime Minister and the
Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers define and personify micromanagement at
the DNA level of an entity.
The mini-Empire that is the Cabinet of Ministers administration has
departments within that mirror the State Departments. Almost without
exception, any decision, draft law, directorate et al. coming from any State
Ministry or Minister, is run through that administrative mini-Empire for the
approving nod from the relevant Deputy Prime Minister. Heaven forbid a
Minister that makes unapproved decisions by at least a Deputy Prime Minister,
if not Prime Minister Yatseniuk himself.
In order to insure there is no personal accountability for anything
however, the old Soviet practice of vizirovanie, where any decree, protocol,
draft law (whatever) requires dozens of signatures from within the Cabinet of
Ministers administrative empire and from within often numerous ministries
themselves, means no individual is responsibly for any single decision – and if
the draft law, decree or protocol (whatever) is exceedingly dubious, or
corrupt, or clearly promoting a vested interest, then delegate the signatory to
the relevant ministry intern or administrative clerk to insure absolute
deniability and unaccountability. The entire point is that lots of people
can sit around in circles and all point the finger at each other, and also get
a share of any nefarious cash on offer.
There is also the issue of the Verkhovna Rada committees.
The amount of behind the curtain horse trading to chair or have undue
influence on certain committees defies belief. Those behind the curtain
have much to gain from controlling committees or buying/renting enough MPs on
those committees to either pass, fail, or forever stall legislation at the
committee stage before it even reaches the Verkhovna Rada for a vote.
Numerous committee meetings don’t take place because MPs designated to a
committee simply don’t turn up in the required numbers to meet the “number
present” protocol demands – with no disciplinary consequences.
If legislation gets as far as a Verkhovna Rada vote, should the vested
interests of the elite be seriously endangered there remains the option to vote
down a law, and “rent” some MPs not already “owned” in an attempt to do so.
If that fails, wait three or six months and then try and amend any
interest interfering legislation into impotency.
Throughout each and every one of these processes, there is no individual
that takes personal responsibility for any decision or outcome.
That there are “owned” and “rented” MPs is in no small measure do to the mechanics
of party funding and the
way party lists operate in the proportional representation electoral process.
Prime Minister Yatseniuk may well once again be bemoaning the Verkhovna
Rada for failing to facilitate much needed reforms, but it is the political
infrastructure and machinery that produces the entirety of a damaged Verkhovna
Rada, a Prime Minister’s mini-Empire that micromanages the departments of
State, a cowed Cabinet of Ministers, and which allows for the Presidential
Administration to interfere with and duplicate the work of the Cabinet of
Ministers.
The political machinery is designed to produce slow, ineffective, vested
interest accommodating, poorly drafted, poor decision based outcomes.
Until the issue of reformatting the political framework and machinery is
tackled there will be a lot more bewailing over who, what, how, when and why untimely
and substandard political outcomes befall whoever is Prime Minister.
As 2016 is the year that will see Ukraine either lose a significant
amount of western political (and financial) goodwill should it fail to reform
at much greater speed – or see increased western political (and financial) will
should it reform at a more respectable pace, there is perhaps good reason to
swiftly address the internal workings of the national political machinery.
2017
may be too late.
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