He wrote to President Viktor Yanukovych: “I express my respect and request in connection with the decree awarding recipients of the Taras Shevchenko Prize that my receiving the Shevchenko prize be delayed until such time as the Ukrainophobic Dmytro Tabachnyk is no longer in power in Ukraine. My position, Mr. President, is not related to you personally, but as long as Dmytro Tabachnyk is in power, I cannot accept the prize.”
Were there no Yanukovych there would be no Tabachnyk
This noble gesture was misdirected. What Shklar failed to recognize was that his disdain was misplaced. Sure Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk, Ukraine’s current education minister, deserves nothing but contempt. But he serves at the pleasure of President Yanukovych. Were there no Yanukovych there would be no Tabachnyk.
Recently, the West has started to wake up to the Yanukovych nightmare. Naturally, its concerns, as manifested by the recent comments of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, are tempered by a certain justification – Ukraine’s unilateral transfer of weapons grade uranium to its “less dangerous” neighbor. After all, the West endorsed Yanukovych before the electoral second round and disingenuously acknowledged the propriety of his election.
Yanukovych has taken every advantage of the West’s endorsement and moved swiftly to consolidate authoritarian power with little regard for democracy and human rights. Suddenly, another Alexander Lukashenko lurks on the buffer of Europe and Russia, this time a buffer of much greater significance.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko has been quick to rebut any allegations made by the West against the Yanukovych administration. Mendacity was rarely a problem in Soviet diplomacy and Gryshchenko has learned that lesson well.
In a recent rebuttal to the “Wall Street Journal’s” editorial “Orange Crushed”, the foreign minister wrote quite unabashedly: “Since it took office nearly one year ago, the Yanukovych administration has worked tirelessly to advance Ukraine’s democratic ambitions, improve the electoral process, expand the rule of law and begin major program of social and economic reform.”
Seriously, that’s what he wrote. Arresting the opposition, curbing freedom of the press, turning Ukraine into an essentially one party system during the October 2010 local elections judged by anyone who matters as being deeply flawed, making the judicial branch simply an implementer of his policies, all of these phenomena are the attributes of Yanukovych’s one year tenure.
In support of “social and economic reform,” the foreign minister even submits his own statistics, most of which are not verifiable: “For the first time in Ukraine’s history, influential public figures – from the opposition and the government as well – have to actually face investigation for committing corruption. There are over 360 ongoing criminal investigations on corruption charges against representatives of the current government, 166 of them at a senior level. The bureaucracy is being cut by 30 percent to 50 percent. Up to 90 percent of state-issued licenses for various entrepreneurial activities have been lifted. Bridges and roads are being built. New subway stations are being unveiled. Gross domestic product grew by 4.5 percent with an equally good outlook for 2011.”
These numbers are meaningless without some specificity. Thus far the only reports of investigations and prosecutions into high-level corruption have identified representatives of the opposition. The reductions in bureaucracy, if in fact accurate, have come only at the expense of the humanitarian sphere, i.e. Institute of National Memory and other institutions germane to making Ukraine in any way Ukrainian. Revocation of licenses means nothing unless they pertain to those illegally procured and building bridges and roads is not an extraordinary function of government.
The GDP figure may be accurate. In any event, largely due to the global economic meltdown Ukraine’s gross domestic product fell by 12 percent in 2009, essentially because Ukraine’s steel exports declined by 16 percent. Its only possible direction was upward. The world’s economy improved, thus enabling Ukraine to export more steel in 2010, an increase in double figures, and so the GDP grew by a modest 4.5 percent.
None of this had anything to do with Yanukovych or Gryshchenko. Still, Ukraine’s current GDP falls far short of what it was in 2008.
Where there no Yanukovych there would be no Gryshchenko
Gryshchenko does not offer any evidence of democracy or human rights’ advancement. Why? Because he can’t. Generalizations like “Ukraine’s ultimate success-preserving democracy” with which he concludes his letter are very easy to compose for a man of his diplomatic training. Specific examples are more difficult, particularly when the entire world has witnessed Ukraine’s tremendous regression in that sphere in only one year.
Using Shklar’s logic, I could submit that the problem with the current situation in Ukraine is the disingenuousness of Gryshchenko. Sure, Gryshchenko is as odious as Tabachnyk. But he serves at the pleasure of Yanukovych.
Where there no Yanukovych there would be no Gryshchenko. Or at the very least a very different one. He was normal some time ago. Even Tabachnyk had moments of normalcy in the past.
What’s important is to recognize the root of the problem. After all, were Yanukovych truly intent on fighting corruption and criminality, he would have started with himself. Attempting to steal three million votes in the 2004 presidential elections would be merely the first count in an indictment which would prove to be quite lengthy.
Askold S. Lozynskyj is immediate past president of the Ukrainian World Congress and its current main representative at the United Nations.
