The decline of Ukrainian democracy, as well as the nation’s relationship with the European Union, can be traced through the four-year tenure of the EU’s ambassador to Ukraine, Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira, who left his post in August.
When he arrived in 2009, Teixeira still had expectations that Ukraine would quickly integrate into the family of democratic nations. Even after President Viktor Yanukovych took power in 2010, the EU still had hope and gave the newly elected Ukrainian leader “the red-carpet treatment” and the benefit of the doubt, Teixeira said.
But it’s been downhill since then.
Yanukovych is unofficially persona non grata in the EU, especially after the jailing of his top political rival, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in 2011. The red carpet has been replaced with the cold shoulder and few Western leaders are ready to meet their Ukrainian counterpart. The EU and Ukraine may even skip their annual summit this year. Several hundred million euros in EU assistance are on hold because of nontransparent government spending. Quite simply, there’s not much to talk about because Yanukovych has disabused the West of its illusions.
Yanukovych has returned “vertical power” to Ukraine, as Teixeira diplomatically puts it. Others have called it creeping authoritarianism.
Whatever the terminology, Teixeira said, 45 million Ukrainians are living under an administration that has monopolized power, imprisoned political opponents, fiddled with election laws and the Constitution and, perhaps worst of all, not “put the interests of the people, the interests of the country, above any other interests.”
All the while, Yanukovych talks about EU integration. “The leadership wants integration in the EU on their own terms. And, of course, this is not possible,” the EU ambassador said.
Not everyone is happy with Teixeira’s outspokenness and, undoubtedly, some in government will be happy to see him leave. Ukrainian officials accused him of interfering in the nation’s internal affairs. Teixeira acknowledges the criticism. “I know I was very controversial and some would say I was very undiplomatic.”
But he makes no apologies.
“There is a big gap between the rhetoric [of Ukraine’s leaders] and reality,” Teixeira said. “And this is what led me to be outspoken in this country. If you are passive when those in power are saying that everything is going fine, that they are adopting all European laws and moving in the direction of European integration, and [the EU] is silent, then we would be accomplices to misleading the Ukrainian people … This is not an honest way to work because Ukrainian people need to know the reality.”
As messy and chaotic as the 2004 Orange Revolution leadership of Tymoshenko and ex-President Viktor Yushchenko turned out to be, Ukraine back then had more democratic features than today, he said.
“The largest handicap in Ukraine is that there is no democratic dispensation where citizens really can determine the results and the outcome of elections,” Teixeira said. “We see that the players are always the same for quite a long time and we see that even the pluralism that existed 5-7 years ago has been reduced…At that time, there were at least three poles of power [Yushchenko, Yanukovych, Tymoshenko] around which gravitated different economic interests. There was room for these political players to play a role in political life. Today we have vertical power.”
But Teixeira doesn’t put the blame entirely on Yanukovych or others in power. Not enough Ukrainians, he said, are demanding democracy.
“What is still regrettable is that in this part of the world people are still convinced that they need an authoritarian dispensation to have order and to stop the mess. I think this is the wrong approach. I think what was considered as messy during the Orange period had in fact positive aspects of having more pluralism, more debate, more different opinions, more checks and balances.”
He is acutely aware of the frustration among Ukrainians who believe “the wealth that is accumulated – often illegitimately – by those in power or associated with power ends up in EU countries and other countries in the West, and then they enjoy the benefits of this wealth elsewhere.”
However, the EU is not even discussing whether to impose sanctions on Ukraine’s leaders that would include denials of visas and holds on suspicious bank accounts. Sanctions are “a difficult question,” he said. “I have my own personal convictions. On this issue I can only speak on behalf of the EU.”
Teixeira is not optimistic that Tymoshenko, imprisoned on a criminal abuse-of-charge that many in the West regard as bogus, will be set free as long as Yanukovych is in power. Instead of giving in to Western demands to set her free, he noted, the authorities have heaped more criminal charges on her.
Institutionally, Teixeira said that democracy cannot thrive when election laws are changed before each vote, when the president “threw away” one Constitution in favor of another and when laws get passed – like the recent one making public spending more opaque – that do not meet democratic standards.
Even if opposition politicians win the Oct. 28 election, there is no guarantee they will control parliament.
“In 2010, when Yanukovych was elected president, he had no majority in the parliament, but he created a majority,” the diplomat said. “The vulnerability of many lawmakers to their own business interests [is high]. The majority of parliament members are not citizens who are living to defend the interests of the people and to defend their convictions and ideologies. Many of them have businesses and want them to survive. And we know that institutions can be used to harass and, therefore, tone down the commitment to challenge power.”
There are, however, glimmers of hope.
Teixeira cites an EU program that has spent more than 50 million euros on democracy projects in 1,000 villages and small towns across the nation. In those places, Teixeira said, townspeople get to develop their priorities, manage budgets and hold public tenders. In short, they learn how to be accountable to their constituents.
“And, therefore, when I visit these communities, I say that the day [will come when] Ukraine will be operating at a national level like these communities are already doing, and then Ukraine will be a European model country,” he said.
Unfortunately, Teixeira never got to speak his mind to Yanukovych. He said the two never met during his tenure. Instead, Teixeira’s highest level regular contacts were with deputy prime ministers or former ones – Sergiy Tigipko, Valeriy Khoroshkovsky and Andriy Klyuyev – as well as Economics Minister Petro Poroshenko.
The Portuguese diplomat’s replacement as head of the European Union delegation in Ukraine is Poland’s Jan Tombinski. Teixeira’s next assignment is Cape Verde, a group of islands off the West African coast and a former Portuguese colony. Compared to Ukraine, Teixeira said his new posting in the democratic nation of 500,000 people, with lots of sea fishing to be done, will “feel like going on a holiday for a very long time.”
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected] and staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected].
Editor’s Note: The transcript of the interview with outgoing European Union Ambassador Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira can be read online at kyivpost.com.
