If Poroshenko is not behind the persecution of former deputy prosecutors Davit Sakvarelidze and Vitaly Kasko, he’s not doing anything to put a stop to it or to speak out in their defense.
Sakvaraledize got fired on March 29 and Kasko quit on Feb. 15, after running into one obstruction after another from Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who Poroshenko protected for more than a year despite evidence of corruption, incompetence and ineffectiveness in bringing any cases to trial involving mass murder and multibillion-dollar theft from the state.
Poroshenko is promoting fresh lawlessness by dragging his feet on finding a respected and independent prosecutor to take Shokin’s place. Instead, corruption and repression are accelerating under the Shokin loyalists who now run the 18,000-prosecutor institution.
They opened up bogus criminal cases against Sakvarelidze and Kasko — the Poroshenko administration equivalent, it appears, to the political persecution under ousted President Viktor Yanukovych that landed Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuriy Lutsenko in jail.
Everyone who lives in Ukraine and who loves the nation should be outraged by the cruel injustice. Their real “crimes,” in the eyes of the oligarchy that Poroshenko protects, are blowing the whistle on the corrupt racketeering of prosecutors, who have let one top suspect after another off the hook. One leading lawyer calls the prosecution service “the biggest mafia” in Ukraine — extorting money, protecting insiders and deciding who goes to jail and who goes free.
Ukrainians have concluded that Poroshenko doesn’t have their best interests at heart and is playing for time, hence the installation of loyalist Volodymyr Groysman as prime minister and the exit of top reformers from the Cabinet — Oleksiy Pavlenko, Natalie Jaresko, Andriy Pivovarsky and Aivaras Abromavicius.
Poroshenko will continue to say the right things, but he’s fooling fewer people all the time. The West should keep suspending aid for now. There is no way to be a democrat while tolerating repression against those who expose corruption and who criticize his increasingly autocratic rule.
Those who think that early elections are a crazy idea should think again. Elections are far better than revolutions, which is where the country is headed again unless Poroshenko radically changes course.
