On Nov. 14 two high-profile reformers stepped down from important posts. Khatia Dekanoidze, one of the reformers from Georgia, resigned as chief of the National Police of Ukraine, and Yulia Marushevska resigned as the head of Odessa Customs Service. To lose two high profile reformers in one day… Well, the optics are not good.
“After the resignations of Dekhanoidze and Marushevska, there are no reformers left in Ukraine!” was the swift reaction of one tweeter.
But not only is that last statement untrue, but it’s a bit of an insult to all of the reformers who are still working inside government and to whom we owe a debt of gratitude.
Those reformers who remain are basically being told: “We don’t see you.” In many cases these reformers are taking on massive challenges, the resistance that comes from vested interests, and are working long hours for pittance salaries in order to change their country. They chose to serve their country, whether it is their homeland or not, and it’s time that we support the reformers that remain, as well as salute those who have gone.
The reformers who have left government introduced a culture of change that continues to this day.
Natalia Jaresko served an impressive stint as Finance Minister, and, I still believe, would have been an excellent prime minister had she been given the chance to form a technocrat government of experts. When the decision was made to appoint current Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman instead, many observers saw this as a signal of an end to reforms. But while Jaresko may not have occupied higher office, the foundations that she built are being felt in a very real fashion today, with a stable economy benefiting all.
In the second post-Maidan government, Aivaras Abromavicius took on the task of leading the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade. Under his leadership, the ministry started to communicate better, and developed plans for putting the economy of the country on a new trajectory.
When he left his post, the headlines were “New Ukraine Corruption Scandal!” and “Another Western Reformer Quits!” but these headlines were only part of the story. Firstly, Abromavicius left a legacy in the ministry that his former colleagues speak about warmly to this day – he changed the culture.
Secondly, he also set a precedent in naming top-level people, in very specific detail, in accusations that led to an investigation being opened into his allegations by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. When we look now at where that case is, nine months later, we can see where the bottlenecks to dealing with corruption in Ukraine really lie.
Dekanoidze served as the Head of the National Police of Ukraine for just over a year, much longer in fact than she stayed in her post as Minister of Education and Science in her native Georgia. During her service to Ukraine, Dekhanoidze took over a new Patrol Police project which, at that time, existed in the half-a-dozen largest cities in the free part of Ukraine.
With breathtaking pace, in defiance of a lack of resources and with insufficient time to fully prepare officers for their jobs, she created a National Police Service with operations in every major population center across a country of 44 million people. Dekhanoidze may be gone, but what she built is not going anywhere. That police force is jam-packed now with dedicated and hardworking public servants.
The reform that Dekhanoidze oversaw stands for the benefit of all Ukrainians, and if she has decided to move on, we thank her for her service and note the frustrations she expressed in her resignation speech. Ukraine must do better.
What of Marushevska? She may have resigned one post, but does that mean she has given up on pressing for reform? Not for a second.
Marushevska came to prominence during the Revolution of Dignity, during the fighting on Hrushevskoho Street, the background on which readers can find here, from Jan. 19 to Jan. 25 of 2014 she recorded a video appeal to the world which went viral – today that video has 8.7 million views.
Marushevska stood for her future during the hardest battles of the revolution, and then after the revolution, unnerved by youth or a lack of experience, she went about trying to make things better for her country by being part of the reform efforts.
I have no doubt at all that she will continue to fight for a better future for all Ukrainians. She isn’t a reformer who has walked away from the challenge – she’s getting ready to start the next battle. She remains a very active part of the ongoing reform process. She’ll just be doing it in a different (probably bigger) role now.
These are four high profile examples, examples of successes to be celebrated, legacies created and stories still being built. There are many more such people, still working inside of a system that needed a complete reboot. These are people who deserve recognition and thanks.
There are still some high profile names, so the claim “there are no reformers left!” is little more than the result of a lazy thought process or a lack of research. Acting Health Minister Ulana Suprun is working a quiet revolution right now. The names of Dima Shumkiv and Max Nefedyovv easily come to mind.
The results of the dedication of all of these people is not easy to see: Sadly, we have to dig a little to be able to shed some light on the actual reform achievements of Ukraine since former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych ran away to a place where corruption is accepted and the corrupt are sheltered.
Recently, the excellent Reanimation Package of Reforms (literally crammed with reformers, but coming at the problems from the perspective of a civil society pressure group) produced a must-read round up of the 17 top reforms post-Maidan.
A significant problem with reforms in Ukraine is one of perspective rather than reality. I shared the above RPR report on Twitter and had two interesting exchanges that followed. One person asked “Yes, but has anything really changed?” and a second commented “Nothing has changed, still the same old people in charge.”
Twitter is a world where people interact in 140 characters or less, and so is ideal for people with short attention spans (like Donald Trump) but after reading the 2,200 words of the RPR report I find it hard anybody can come away with a harsher conclusion than “that’s impressive, more needed, no taking your foot off the gas, but well done so far!”
Maybe one of the problems with communicating reforms is the fact that many of these public servants who are making real differences every day to and for their country are anonymous. Maybe what people need to really get some perspective and to deepen their gratitude to the reformers that are hard at work every day in Ukraine, is to see their faces, to know their names, to understand the sacrifices those people are making and to understand why they do what they do, what motivates them and drives them.
A new exhibition opened today in the Kyiv City Museum on Bohdan Khmelnytskiy Street. It is called “I Am a Reformer” and it features the faces and the stories of modern day Ukrainian heroes. Go and check it out, find out who these people are, learn their stories, see what they are doing, and understand why they’re doing it.
Then let’s give the reformers the publicity and the respect they deserve.
