As a journalist, Dmytro Dobrodomov published dozens of anti-corruption investigations. But only one of the stories led to criminal proceedings against an investigated official. The other targets of his investigations remained safely in their jobs.
Eventually, the 39-year-old Dobrodomov decided he wasn’t making enough impact. So he ran for parliament in October 2014 and won a seat among some of those whom he had previously been investigating.
As an independent lawmaker, Dobrodomov has co-authored about 50 bills so far. One of them launched the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. Another opened up the country’s property registers to the public.
“In fact, I legitimized what I have been doing as an investigative journalist,” Dobrodomov says.
However, a lot of the bills initiated by Dobrodomov are still a long way from making it onto the law books. One of them is a bill that, if supported by a majority in parliament, would stipulate life sentences for officials found guilty of corruption – including the president, ministers, lawmakers and judges.
Although the anti-corruption parliamentary committee has supported the document, Dobrodomov, also a member of the committee, doubts the parliament as a whole will pass it.
“There are almost no chances it will be adopted as it is,” he said. “Some lawmakers will try to clean it up.”
Dobrodomov said the main factor causing Ukraine’s political crisis is that most of the current top officials have been in politics for years.
He recalls a book about the Orange Revolution of 2004 that he was given as a gift a couple of years ago.
“There is a picture of the final scene of the Revolution. About 40 people standing on the stage. Only two of them, (former Ukrainian President Viktor) Yushchenko and (former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola) Azarov, aren’t involved in today’s politics,” Dobrodomov said. “The rest of them are.”
Dobrodomov says Ukraine’s politics will stay “cynical and corrupt” unless new people enter the parliament and the government: journalists, civil activists and volunteers.
“They are unique, self-organized, they are spending their time and money (on activism) voluntarily, they have a different mindset,” Dobrodomov said. “And they are ready (for change).”
Prior to entering politics, Dobrodomov worked as a journalist for more than 15 years.
He tried his luck during the parliamentary election in 2012 as a candidate in a single-mandate constituency in Lviv with Vitaliy Klitschko’s UDAR party, but failed to win.
He was then elected to parliament as an independent candidate in 2014. He ran in his hometown, Lviv, in the neighborhood where he grew up.
After entering the Verkhovna Rada, he joined the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction. He said he had done so because he wanted to be a member of the ruling pro-European coalition. He liked the principles it declared.
However, he said that after six months he realized that most of the coalition members were not planning to implement the coalition agreement. He left the president’s faction in July.
He said that the failed no-confidence vote of Feb. 16 proved he had been correct about the coalition: its members don’t care about the country.
However, according to Dobrodomov, whoever replaces current Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the new government will be temporary, and Ukraine will face early parliament elections, as the current parliament can’t hold together.
“It’s always been ‘our guys’ and ‘not our guys’ in parliament, and there has always been a confrontation. Now most of them are ‘our guys,’ supposedly pro-democratic and pro-European, but there is still confrontation – now it’s between themselves,” he said.
However, he says, the problem with early elections is that young ambitious politicians don’t understand how difficult it is to overcome the 5 percent threshold. Parties have to win at least 5 percent of the overall vote to qualify for seats in the parliament.
He blames the new politicians for failing to assess the situation in the country correctly. They, he said, think that what is written on Facebook represents the general spirit, while in fact it only represents the attitudes of 5 to 10 percent of the public.
Another 90 percent of Ukrainians live in villages and small towns, and have different views, Dobrodomov said.
“The old politicians know this, but the younger ones do not,” he says. “And then a party that I like gains 0.3 percent at the local elections. And they are surprised, because according to Facebook, 20 percent of people were ready to vote for them.”
Until young politicians team up and learn how to work with voters, and until the voters learn to analyze the situation and follow politics, nothing is going to change, Dobrodomov said.
“After all,” he shrugs, “the nation deserves the authorities it elects.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]
