The gist of his article is that radical or revolutionary change is not in Ukraine’s interests now and actually may threaten a fragile state. He makes a plea for civic activists and others to tone down their demands for a war against corruption.
Karatnycky wrote: “Civil society must understand that the government’s vacillation in challenging Ukraine’s wide array of rent-seeking oligarchs reflects the complexity of Ukraine’s democratic politics and the administration’s precarious parliamentary majority.”
President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk need to “balance the need to confront oligarchic excesses with the need to preserve their majority,” he wrote and he worries that new elections for parliament “would usher in a far more populist legislature…”
Ukraine, Karatnycky writes, “can ill-afford to undermine the stability of its state, which is the only instrument for defense against a foreign aggressor and the only legitimate mechanism by which to implement reform.”
We don’t agree with several of his arguments.
Firstly, Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk are to blame for the political pickle they are in by, as many credible people have alleged, selling high places on party lists in the October 2014 election to many lawmakers who are obstructing reform.
Secondly, Ukraine’s leaders compounded their mistake by not overhauling the corrupt, politically subservient and ineffective criminal justice system.
Thirdly, a revolutionary – not evolutionary – approach is what’s needed in criminal justice, deregulation and many other areas.
Fourthly, we don’t believe the Ukrainian state and people are so fragile. Ukrainians have shown a willingness to defend their rights and their nation, even absent a strong state.
Fifthly, we are not as afraid of new parliamentary elections. Ukrainian voters have progressively purged the worst elements of the Verkhovna Rada in successive elections.
We are humble enough to recognize that our opinions may be wrong and Karatnycky may be right. But from our vantage point, Ukraine needs to move full speed ahead against corruption. Society’s discontent is a direct result of moving too slowly, not too quickly, in the anti-corruption fight, so decisive to Ukraine’s future.
