Apparently, a forwarding agent hands out $10,000 to “controlling organs,” according to one of the messages sent on Feb. 5 by Khomutynnyk, a member of tax and customs policy committee in the Verkhovna Rada. All of those state controlling organs are in on the corrupt scheme, according to another message. A third one names two alleged perpetrators of the crime, senior figures at the State Fiscal Service.
This conversation was documented by a photographer of Ukrainian News information agency on Feb. 5. Khomutynnyk, in his comment to the agency, said he “decided to inform” the Odesa Oblast governor about the problem with “a request to nip the illegal actions” following an investigation by his parliament committee.
Mustafa Nayyem, a former journalist-turned-politician, was clearly not satisfied with the explanation of his colleague, formerly a member of the Party of Regions — led by deposed President Victor Yanukovych.
Khomutynnyk has served on the customs and tax committee in the Rada of several convocations. Nayyem said on his Facebook page that he asked the general prosecutor “to check potential corrupt relations” between Khomutynnyk and three other people featuring in the messages.
But this little brewing corruption scandal is just a tip of the iceberg of Ukraine’s politics. The iceberg itself is big enough to crash the Titanic that is Ukraine, at least that was my impression from my visit to parliament today after a long break outside of Ukraine.
Deputies representing all factions were sad and on the verge of depression, and this is not even about war or diplomatic solutions of the country’s crisis, which continue grabbing international headlines.
It’s about business as usual in Ukraine. The new, post-Maidan generation of Ukraine’s politicians feels outplayed by the old elite who still hold the majority of seats in parliament. They feel there aren’t enough of them to make a critical mass.
First-timers in parliament constantly talk about their frustrations.
They say they are having a hard time getting used to seeing good legal initiatives poisoned by articles specifically inserted for someone’s benefit. They cannot understand why in private their colleagues trash bills only to press “Yes” during the vote in parliament. They don’t get the hysteria during public performances in front of the TV cameras. They feel outplayed by the political dinosaurs and sometimes start to wonder if they belong in this cynical world, where they hoped they could change something.
Some of them came with idealistic expectations of how much they will be able to change in Ukraine, and they are having trouble accepting the fact that there is no critical mass of like-minded people in the Rada and politics in general, and that changing the world one baby step at a time will have to suffice.
It’s also starting to dawn on them just how much the old political class is tied up by various old corrupt schemes and agreements, and that they run across parties and years, and are a risk factor for themselves. They have few ways of avoiding this risk with salaries that hover around Hr 12,000 per month, or about $550 (including travel and office expenses).
Barely any of my dozen interlocutors in parliament failed to mention the dangerous infighting that is taking place between President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s parties and factions. This reflects heavily on other elements of politics.
For example, some of the dysfunctional ministers and general prosecutor who deserve to be dismissed, are being kept in their jobs because many deputies believe that it would make Poroshenko look politically weak if senior appointments that came within his quota in the government were to be replaced. As a result, newer political forces like Samopomich don’t even want to get involved in the political game to oust General Prosecutor Vitaliy Yarema, because they don’t want to spend their energy first fighting a losing cause (Poroshenko’s faction would not vote for the prosecutor’s ouster, and the rest would lack the votes), and then accusations of playing someone’s game.
And the loser of this power play are the Ukrainian people, because massive crimes against the nation remain unsolved and unpunished, public procurement tenders remain fixed, and laws remain skewed to reflect private interests.
Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].
