The announcement that former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has had his Ukrainian citizenship withdrawn has shocked the Ukrainian body politic.
It is only two years (2015) since that, with some fanfare, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko bestowed Ukrainian citizenship on his former university friend, and gave him the mandate of reforming (cleaning up) the Odesa Oblast administration, potentially providing a model for the rest of Ukraine. Odesa had long been viewed as a hotbed of graft and corruption and, given Saakashvili’s celebrated success in his home country of Georgia in fighting graft and improving the business environment, the view was that if Odesa could be cleaned up, then there was real hope for the rest of Ukraine.
By appointing Saakashvili, Poroshenko also had his own reform credentials augmented and won friends in the West, particularly in the U.S. where Saakashvili was still hailed by the D.C. establishment for standing up to Russia and President Vladimir Putin in the brief Russian-Georgian war of 2008.
The task of cleaning up Odesa proved more difficult than Georgia, and quickly this began to look like a poisoned chalice for Saakashvili.
Increasingly Saakashvili complained about foot-dragging from the Poroshenko administration in Kyiv, and leveled none-too-veiled criticism of the president himself, accusing him of not being committed to the war on graft. Eventually, Saakashvili resigned in November, after less than a year on the job. In doing, he also revealed political ambitions in Ukraine itself, eyeing the presidential elections in 2019 and forming his own political party to act as a launch-pad presumably therein.
But the decision by Poroshenko to remove Saakashvili’s citizenship is a strange one in many respects.
Saakashvili, while seen as a skilled political operator and orator, has struggled to build momentum behind his own campaign since leaving office. Perhaps this reflects his own Georgian origins which might just not have tuned into fully with the Ukrainian electorate and his failures in Odesa.
A recent poll by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation/Razumkov Centre put support for his Movement of New Forces at just 1.8 percent, below the threshold required to secure parliamentary representation, and well behind the likes of Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivschyna party with 11.2 percent, and Poroshenko’s Solidarity Bloc with 9.3 percent.
Saakashvili’s star in Ukraine seemed to be on the wane, so why would Poroshenko see fit to move now against his former friend? And this move would seem to have only downside risks as arguably this move risked criticism (from foreign friend and foe) for moving against a loyal ally of the West in Saakashvili, and for showing less than democratic credentials. It also risked playing into the hands of Poroshenko’s opponents – and today even Tymoshenko came out quickly in support of Saakashvili, not a natural ally of her own brand of populism. Tymoshenko milked the move by arguing that it reveals Poroshenko’s own weak democratic credentials. Even members of Poroshenko’s own party argued that it played against the interests of Ukraine.
So why the move?
Perhaps this is just a case of political and indeed personal revenge, with the criticism of his presidency by Saakashvili, just grating too much with Poroshenko. And he waited for the right opportunity to move – in this case, allegations that Saakashvili failed to declare allegations of wrongdoing in his native Georgia on filling out his citizenship application. It has to be said though that those allegations had been long known – as levied by Saakashvili’s nemesis in Georgia, Bidzini Ivanishvili.
More likely this is a case of Poroshenko clearing the decks for looming elections, and messaging to other potential political opponents as to his own ruthless political nature. Perhaps Poroshenko is signaling that he is ready for a brutal political fight to come. Indeed, Poroshenko also recently moved to undermine another potential “reform” candidate for the 2019 elections, Andriy Sadoviy, the mayor of Lviv, via that city’s recent trash scandal.
But I still think the biggest threat to Poroshenko comes not from Tymoshenko, but from a new, fresh/different face on the political landscape – perhaps someone like the musician, Slava Vakarchuk, who seems to have been quietly building momentum behind a potential challenge in the slated 2019 presidential elections.
Remember that Ukraine has a track record of relative political novices coming from the sidelines to win the presidency – examples therein would be Leonid Kuchma in 1994. Even Poroshenko himself in 2014, came from left field, albeit admittedly he was an experienced political operator – albeit through the EuroMaidan Revolution, I think few people (actually I did) identified Poroshenko as a likely future president.
And in the 2010 presidential elections, Sergei Tigipko came from nowhere to secure a surprise third place, and become something of a kingmaker for the second round run-off vote between ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled power on Feb. 22, 2014, and Tymoshenko. So perhaps what Poroshenko fears most is a fresh-faced reformer, offering something different and new.
But I would also argue that the move against Saakashvili is the clearest indication yet that Poroshenko is considering moving to early parliamentary/presidential elections – and taking out one potential rival, and sending a signal of intent to others.
Perhaps also it might send a signal to his own ambitious prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, not to get ambitions above his stature, and hold back from moving himself to challenge for the presidency.
By moving to early elections, he catches Vakarchuk and other rivals off guard, benefits from relative economic recovery and also stalls much needed and difficult reforms on the anti-corruption front.
