Not for the first time in public,
Lutsenko poured water into a plastic cup that he had punched holes in. He held
it up as the audience watched the water leak out. His visual aid was meant to
symbolize how he sees his task — stopping corrupt schemes (repairing the
glass) so that budget revenues don’t leak out like water, leaving Ukraine’s
treasury as empty as the leaky glass.
The prop show took place over the
lunchtime discussion called “Changing Elites in Ukraine” at the 13th
annual Yalta European Strategy conference eon Sept. 17 in Kyiv.
The problem many have with his
analogy is that Lutsenko has his priorities wrong, assuming he is not entirely
incompetent in his post, an open question given his lack of legal or prosecutorial experience in the job he has held since May.
Lutsenko was talking more like a
member of parliament, emphasizing the need for new legislation, rather than a
prosecutor, which involves criminal investigations and filing formal charges against those who stole $40
billion from the nation since 2010 and against those who ordered many murders,
including those of 100 EuroMaidan Revolution demonstrators just before
President Viktor Yanukovych fled power on Feb. 22, 2014.
“I don’t think the most important
part of my job is to calculate the number of imprisoned and arrested
criminals,” Lutsenko said. “That’s only one part of my job.”
Excuse me, but prosecuting people for crimes is the most
important part of your job, Lutsenko. Countries that don’t punish corruption,
like Ukraine, are poorer than those who do.
It’s no wonder, however, that
Lutsenko doesn’t want to keep score because prosecutors would have nothing to
put up on the scoreboard except zeroes – as in zero trials or convictions for
major corruption and capital crimes.
Lutsenko, incidentally, skipped a
morning panel on “Fighting Corruption.” My guess is he made it only to the lunchtime
meeting on the calculation that he
would not face tough questioning.
Fortunately, however, Mikheil
Saakashvili, the Odesa Oblast governor and former Georgian president, and
Mustafa Nayyem, the member of parliament and investigative journalist, raised clear-headed and correct criticism.
Saakashvili said that, despite
Ukraine being at war with Russia, the Ukrainian elite “shares the same values
of Russia’s elite.” Those in top political power positions are “children
of Kuchma,” meaning protégés of ex-President Leonid Kuchma, the autocratic president who ruled for 10 years until 2004. Saakashvili said that Ukrainian and Russian elites enjoy
the same lifestyles, earn money the same way – “rent from commodities” and
create a “closed system” that is akin to a closed joint-stock oligarch society.
He said that Ukraine’s oligarchs
effectively choose the president, prime minister, members of parliament and
other proxies by backing them with financial and media resources.
The way forward, Saakashvili said,
is for Ukrainian voters to elect new leaders in the next elections. “In the
end, I’m optimistic,” he said.
Nayyem took Lutsenko to task for holding
secret meetings with President Petro Poroshenko, billionaire oligarch Igor
Kolomoisky — who owns the nation’s largest bank and many other major assets — and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
Going back to the leaky glass
metaphor, Nayyem also said that Lutsenko and Ukraine’s elites have done
nothing to break Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov’s monopoly control of the
energy market. Such schemes, he said, are robbing the state’s budget of
revenues.
Nayyem said that the Bloc of Petro
Poroshenko, of which he is a member, and Narodny Front, led by ex-Prime
Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, have blocked legislation to create an independent
energy regulator to oversee the critical energy sector.
“This government does not have will
to fight corruption. We are talking about lack of will to fight monopolies,”
Nayyem said. He also urged Lutsenko “to serve the country and the people” and not
insiders.
The elites keeping alive the old corrupt oligarch have media, money and law enforcement on their side, while the reformers
have transparency, freedom of speech and accountability on their side, Nayyem said.
Right now, he said, the reformers
are weaker, but as the two sides battle for control, “the country loses.”
Moreover, Nayyem said, “you cannot criticize” the elites in or out of power. If you do, they are so thin-skinned that they accuse their critics of working for Russia or being an enemy of Ukraine’s
state.
Tying the theme of unpunished corruption
with economic development, Kyiv lawyer Daniel Bilak said that the single
biggest obstacle to foreign investment is Ukraine’s corruption and lack of rule
of law.
Let’s hope Lutsenko, the oligarchs
and their representatives took this lunchtime advice to heart. But I doubt it.
Ukraine’s progress will speed up, in my view, only when – as Saaskashvili and
Nayyem said – new leaders are elected who are not tied into the old oligarch
ways of doing business and truly serve the people.
Only then will Ukrainians get the country,
government and economy they deserve.
