Soviet legacy of corruption is most often blamed for degenerate behavior of Ukraine’s elite, which is basically the same that held the reins of administrative power and judicial system over the years since independence and before.
It has been rightly suggested that most of them — including about 10,000 judges and prosecutors — should be summarily dismissed. Aside from the feasibility question of such a cleanup, another question would be who would take their place and how?
Meanwhile the hard-fought accomplishments of the Euromaidan revolution are gradually squandered inside the governing pyramid. Nelly-willy, Vladimir Lenin’ dictum comes to mind: “Revolution cannot succeed without a firing squad”. That solution may be workable when anti-revolutionary forces are the enemy. In Ukraine, however, the drag consists of the battalions of chameleons and leeches, who are amazingly adaptable to the existing political wind, and are able to manipulate the levers of power despite regime change.
The dominance of such a culture of opportunism is no accident. It has been a way of existential and privileged survivalof the elite as well as anyone close to it, no one knows for how many generations under the aegis, direct rule or hegemony of foreign power – Russia.
A good question is: Are there any “good guys” among the elite, or a sufficient number ofcapable ones outside that could be found to replace the corrupt crowd in the top echelons?
If President Petro Poroshenko is serious about uprooting corruption, he must have been asking that same question for some time, without finding an affirmative answer as of today. Not surprisingly, he turned outside the country for top appointments, and found some.
Important as they are, a few successful top choices is not enough. And regrettably, replacements for the corrupt mass seem to be hiding in a forest, or are non-existent.
If the latter is true, some answers may be found by turning to the memory of millions of Ukrainians exterminated by Stalin’s Soviet regime, among them the flower of national rebirth of the 1920s that was cut down in massive purges of the 1930s.
It was the same genocidal technology applied by Moscow a few years later in killing thousands of Polish military and cultural elite inKatyn forest.
Bringing up the subject of historic genocide inflicted on Ukraine by the Russian empire is not a copout for failures of Ukraine’s leadership today. But it is a legacy that needs to be factored in when trying to figure out the best way of solving the problem of corruption near the top.
To begin with, it should be noted that a favorite technique being used by corrupt officials to avoid prosecution is resorting to technicalities of Ukrainian law to cripple any meaningful action. Longstanding personal connections within defective judicial system make it the same as de facto subversion of the government.
The president needs to start using the power of executive order to nullify quasi-judicial obstruction, in all cases. He can invoke martial law. Ukraine is at war in the east, soldiers are dying almost daily, and patience may be wearing thin.
If President Poroshenko fails to take needed action, the picture will deteriorate to the point of facing mass protests against government, and not just anger from the Right Sector. Part of the president’s problem may be his difficulty of disengaging himself from some friends and colleagues of the past 25 years.
He has the stuff to get it done, if he so chooses.
