The resignation of First Deputy Interior Minister Ekaterina Zguladze-Glucksmann, a Georgian-born reformer who revamped Ukraine’s distrusted police, on May 11 came as yet another blow to those who hope Ukraine can shed its corrupt ways.
Her departure is the latest one in an exodus of reformers from government, delivering big setbacks to the “new” Ukraine that many hoped would emerge in the wake of the EuroMaidan Revolution that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014.
President Petro Poroshenko and other Ukrainian leaders are not only stalling reforms, critics argue, but reversing some of the ones achieved in the last two years
Poroshenko’s spokesman Sviatoslav Tsegolko did not reply to a request for comment.
Zguladze-Glucksmann did not explain why she quit. But her abrupt departure came amid sabotage of her efforts to cleanse the nation’s police force and other law enforcement employees in the vast 220,000-employee Interior Ministry, led by Arsen Avakov.
Some believe that police reform is effectively being killed — the same way an attempted cleansing of the discredited Prosecutor General’s Office failed last year.
“Ukraine is treading down a path that I don’t like at all,” Sasha Borovik, an ex-deputy of Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili, told the Kyiv Post. “The old system has been re-formatted, and reforms have been scrapped. In this context the oligarchic regime has strengthened its positions and is consolidating its economic and political power.”
Borovik argued that there “have been no fundamental reforms in this country” and that “the country’s leaders have never had the political will for it.”
Corruption triumphs
The Prosecutor General’s Office remains one of the most unreformed institutions.
Almost all reformers and officials who were investigating prosecutorial corruption have either been fired or suspended.
Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaly Kasko resigned in February after accusing then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin of graft and sabotaging reform, while another reformist deputy of Shokin, Davit Sakvarelidze, was fired in March.
The situation became even worse in April when prosecutors elected internal regulators who are loyalists of acting Prosecutor General Yury Sevruk — many of them suspected of corruption. Critics say the regulators will block any efforts to cleanse the prosecutor’s office of corrupt officials.
Ukraine has lost some of its most accomplished and promising reformers in recent months. Some remained silent about their reasons for quitting, others were forced out while still more complained about corruption. Source: Kyiv Post research
‘A law for one person’
Poroshenko and his party have rejected proposals to appoint
a candidate trusted by civil society as prosecutor general or holding a
transparent competition for the job.
Yury Lutsenko, a Poroshenko loyalist and the head of the president’s 135-member faction in parliament, has attempted to cast himself as a reformer who will clean up the mess in the prosecutor’s office. Poroshenko appointed Lutsenko as prosecutor general immediately after lawmakers on May 12 passed a law that seemed tailor-made for making the ex-interior minister qualified for the top prosecutor’s job. The legislation abolished requirements for prosecutorial experience and a law degree.
“We’re passing a bill narrowly tailored for one person,” Sergii Leshchenko, a reformist lawmaker from the Poroshenko Bloc, said on the Shuster Live show on May 11. “This is savage. In the civilized world, laws are not passed for one person.”
The vote was held at record speed and was accompanied with numerous procedural violations, critics say.
After the May 12 vote, Leshchenko wrote on Facebook: “I don’t believe in the independence of a prosecutor general for whose sake parliament was forced to its knees. They wiped their feet with the Constitution and Ukraine’s international obligations.”
Poroshenko’s opponents say that having a prosecutor general with no legal education is at odds with international standards and that a Poroshenko protege would never be able to prosecute top-level graft and overhaul the prosecutor’s office.
“In a country that has gone through a revolution, the leader of the presidential faction is becoming prosecutor general after two years of stalled reform and thriving top-level corruption,” Leshchenko said. “Before that, the same president appointed two tame prosecutor generals who were his puppets and blocked all investigations against the president’s inner circle.”
Many also noted that Lustenko failed to reform the Interior Ministry when he headed it from 2007-2010.
Police reform killed
The current situation at the Interior Ministry is also disappointing.
Zguladze’s resignation followed that of another Georgian-born reformer and head of the National Police’s security department, Grigory Grigalashvili, in April. The resignations come amid the sabotage of Zguladze’s efforts to cleanse the police. Courts are reinstating many police officers fired by vetting commissions.
Moreover, representatives of civil society have left vetting commissions, and controversial loyalists of the Interior Ministry have joined them.
All commissions in five oblasts where vetting is under way now are dominated by the Interior Ministry’s “old guard” and are unlikely to fire corrupt officials, Yevhenia Zakrevska, a member of a vetting commission and a lawyer for killed EuroMaidan protesters, told the Kyiv Post.
Threat to Odesa team
Another reformer, Saakashvili, threatened to resign in April, saying that Poroshenko was derailing his efforts to reform customs and law enforcement.
“I don’t think he will resign, but he can be fired at any time,” Borovik told the Kyiv Post. “It makes no sense to negotiate with Poroshenko. He says one thing and does the opposite… He promised us everything and has done nothing.”
A major member of Saakashvili’s team, Sakvarelidze, was fired as chief prosecutor of Odesa Oblast in March.
Borovik and another deputy of Saakashvili, Maria Gaidar, resigned earlier in May because of a new law that bans double citizenship for officials. Gaidar and Borovik will keep working as aides to Saakashvili and members of Odesa Oblast’s legislature and Odesa city council, respectively.
Borovik said he is considering leaving Ukraine because of the hostility to reform.
No customs reform
Meanwhile, subordinates of Roman Nasirov, the controversial head of the State Fiscal Service, have signed a letter calling for the dismissal of Odesa Oblast Customs Chief Yulia Marushevska, who is trying to make customs clearance faster and graft-free.
She wrote on Facebook on May 11 that Nasirov, who faces large-scale corruption accusations and denies them, was planning to fire her.
“Nasirov has confirmed once again that he is part of the corrupt system and is clinging to his job,” she said.
Marushevska says that the State Fiscal Service and the Security Service of Ukraine have started inspections of her customs office in an effort to derail her work.
Anti-reform Cabinet
Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman’s Cabinet, appointed last month, has also been lambasted as lacking reform potential. Several reform-minded ministers of ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s Cabinet are gone. These include Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius, Infrastructure Minister Andriy Pyvovarsky, Agriculture Minister Oleksiy Pavlenko and Education Minister Serhiy Kvit.
Grey cardinal
In another blow to reformers, Ihor Kononenko, Poroshenko’s controversial “grey cardinal” in parliament, was reinstated as a deputy head of the Poroshenko Bloc’s faction in the Verkhovna Rada on May 12.
Kononenko was suspended as a deputy head of the faction in January after Abromavicius accused him of large-scale corruption and trying to impose his placeholders at state companies.
The Prosecutor General’s Office told Lutsenko last month that it had found no proof for Abromavicius’ accusations against Kononenko.
“This shows that Poroshenko has opted for free fall instead of reforms, cleansing and an anti-corruption drive,” Leshchenko wrote on May 12.
