You're reading: Saakashvili threatens to resign; Groysman reportedly drops prime minister bid

Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili on April 11 lambasted President Petro Poroshenko and threatened to resign if his demands are not met.

Saakashvili said that Poroshenko and other central authorities had consistently sabotaged his efforts to reform the economy and law enforcement agencies in Odesa Oblast. He demanded radical reforms and firings of corrupt officials in the tax office and Security Service of Ukraine.

“Not a single promise made after the EuroMaidan Revolution has been fulfilled,” Saakashvili said at a news briefing in Odesa. “The problem lies in the political elite and in the president’s approach to developments within the country and to the process of reform.”

Saakashvili reportedly has ambitions to take the prime minister’s seat, which is soon to be vacant as Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced his resignation on April 10.

The Odesa governor’s radical address coincided in time with reports that the main candidate to replace Yatsenyuk, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Groysman, has dropped his bid to become prime minister after negotiations with Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk.

Mustafa Nayyem, a lawmaker from the Poroshenko Bloc, said that the three disagreed on the ministers’ candidacies.

Nayem told Ukrainska Pravda that the further negotiations were postponed until the morning of April 12, when the parliament is expected to vote to accept Yatsenyuk’s resignation and pass Groysman’s candidacy.

Viktoria Siumar, a lawmaker with Yatsenyuk’s faction People’s Front, said that her party had no disagreements with Groysman. She said that Groysman backed out of the deal due to “his problems with Poroshenko’s Bloc faction.”

Now, the People’s Front demands that their coalition partner, the Poroshenko Bloc, offer a new candidacy for prime minister.

Saakashvili’s demands

As the prime minister agreement was disrupted in Kyiv, in Odesa Saakashvili made a public attack on Poroshenko at an unscheduled press briefing.

He said that orders to derail his team’s reforms in Odesa had come from the Presidential Administration.

“The region is being surrendered to enemies of Ukraine,” Saakashvili said, referring to his local opponents, including lawmakers Serhiy Kivalov and Dmytro Golubov, Odesa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov and Mykola Stoyanov, the region’s chief prosecutor.

Saakashvili demanded that politicians “stop this horse-trading and double-dealing around the Cabinet” and immediately launch radical reforms.

“I urge lawmakers not to vote for the Cabinet under these conditions,” he said, referring to a vote for a Groysman-led Cabinet that was expected to take place on April 12. “They want to foist upon us a Cabinet that will be impotent and corrupt and will serve oligarchic clans.”

He went on to demand that the Verkhovna Rada appoint a national unity government trusted by society.

Prosecutorial reform in Odesa

Saakashvili also demanded that Odesa Oblast’s chief prosecutor, Mykola Stoyanov, be fired and called him a “separatist and puppet of oligarchs.”

Stoyanov, an ex-ally of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka and pro-Russian politician Ihor Markov, should be fired under the lustration law, which envisages dismissing all top Yanukovych-era officials, according to the Justice Ministry.

Stoyanov, who is also an ally of oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, is accused of large-scale corruption, since his family owns several businesses, luxury cars and high-end real estate.

Stoyanov denies the accusations of corruption.

Protesters demanding Stoyanov’s dismissal set up a permanent tent camp in front of the oblast prosecutor’s office and blocked access to the building last month.

Stoyanov replaced Georgian-born reformer Davit Sakvarelidze, a Saakashvili ally who was fired as chief prosecutor of Odesa Oblast and a deputy prosecutor general last month.

“After Sakvarelidze was fired, Ukraine’s central government surrendered to local separatists,” Saakashvili said on April 11.

He also called for firing all those responsible for criminal cases against Sakvarelidze and another ex-deputy prosecutor general, Vitaly Kasko.

Customs reform

Another Saakashvili ally, Odesa Oblast’s
customs chief Yulia Marushevska, is facing pressure from Roman
Nasirov, head of the State Fiscal Service and a Poroshenko ally.

Marushevska said at the briefing that
Nasirov, who faces accusations of corruption, was “destroying” everything she has done to make customs
clearance in Odesa Oblast fast and corruption-free. Saakashvili
called Nasirov a “thief” in an interview with 112 Ukraine
television.

Nasirov denies the accusations.

Cases against Trukhanov

Another demand voiced by Saakashvili is to open criminal cases against Odesa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov over his alleged Russian citizenship and offshore companies.

Hromadske television on April 3 published documents leaked from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca that show that Trukhanov illegally owns a large network of undeclared offshore companies.

The companies are registered to Trukhanov’s Moscow address, which lends credence to a copy of Trukhanov’s alleged Russian passport published by lawmaker Volodymyr Ariev in 2014.

Trukhanov denies the accusations.

Saakashvili also demanded that officials of the Security Service of Ukraine who are involved in the “political persecution of reformers” and corrupt tax officials in Odesa Oblast be fired.