I have questions or demands to President Petro Poroshenko.
Where is the long-promised law for national security? How long will you postpone it and why? Why is U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis more concerned about it than the Ukrainian president?
Where is the much-needed reform of the Security Service of Ukraine?
Where is the upgrade of Ukroboronprom? Why are the changes to the regulation of the defense system and the compliance of Ukrainian army to the NATO standards so slow and sketchy?
Will we hesitate with this issue until the NATO Summit in July? Are we ready to lose the priceless time and their trust in us?
Is there any success in the de-oligarchization process?
Are there any achievements of the General Prosecutor’s Office in extending the European Union’s sanctions against the representatives of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s regime?
When will you finally become punctual in putting Ukrainian ambassadors to work, at least in the most important countries for Ukraine? And when will you appoint an ambassador to Denmark, considering that they are going to organize Ukraine Reform Conference in June already?
And it goes like this forever.
The murderers of the EuroMaidan protesters are not punished, the language law of Serhiy Kivalov and Vadym Kolesnichenko is still very much alive.
And don’t even get me started on independent law enforcement authorities and even more independent courts. We have already seen how those authorities can get synchronized very quickly when they work against the president’s enemies.
Let me also say a word about those enemies.
In my opinion, people who truly want to build the new country and are not happy about the quality and tempo of the reforms should stop competing for the “Best Populist” award and put an end to flirting with all the other political animals of this circus.
Poroshenko needs to understand that his tactics of postponing and being late with important political choices as well as the inconsistency of reforms is becoming a strategy for how to make this country lose it all.
Time and trust are priceless resources.
The problem isn’t that Poroshenko, the politician, loses them. The problem is that Ukrainian authorities and the Ukrainian state lose the trust of its own citizens and the whole world. A major reason for that is that the head of the state should show leadership.
Ukraine needs to drastically dismantle its oligarchic system and get away from the Russian-Soviet influence. Ukraine needs to become a country for free and responsible people, a country which is capable of defending itself.
The politicians of a new generation should demand these systematic changes, both from the current president and from themselves as potential decision-makers of the future.
Hanna Hopko is an independent member of Ukraine’s parliament who chairs the Verkhovna Rada’s Committee on Foreign Affairs.
