You're reading: Politician lawyers try to change course of nation

“Life is not only about money. After you get enough, you look for other things,” said Igor Shevchenko, a former top Ukrainian lawyer turned politician.

He is not alone among Ukraine’s top legal experts to be actively engaged in politics, helping out, or at least warming up to the idea.

The legal profession has always been a major source of public figures, starting from Rome’s Cicero to Christine Lagarde, the current head of the International Monetary Fund. Both candidates in the U.S. presidential race have Harvard law degrees.

After having worked and profited in Ukraine’s crony capitalistic system, some of the nation’s top lawyers are becoming increasingly fed up with its shortcomings. They want change.

Serhiy Vlasenko is probably the country’s most visible legal name at the moment. The head of the defense team for Tymoshenko, he notably defended presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko’s interests in the now historic Supreme Court hearing after the fraudulent 2004 presidential elections that triggered the Orange Revolution. Vlasenko, along with then legal sidekick Oleksiy Reznikov, helped to seal the legality of Yushchenko’s victory in the repeat presidential election of Dec. 26, 2004, over Viktor Yanukovych.

Nonetheless, politically speaking, Ukraine’s legal circles are still punching below their weight. In Ukraine’s parliament, they seem to be outnumbered by business tycoons, shady characters, former factory managers, engineers and career bureaucrats.

Things, however, are slowly changing, as growing numbers of lawyers move towards public life.
Ukraine’s top lawyers say they are well-equipped for public office. They are trained in logic, skilled in communication, knowledgeable about how the country is structured and educated in the West.

“I do believe that we are best suited,” said Serhiy Chorny, managing partner of Baker & McKenzie in Ukraine, who may jump into the political fray in the future. “I would say that we work in the field of social management. Currently in Ukraine, quite different skills are needed to succeed in politics than those you would expect from a lawyer.” Today, he said, aligning with a big business is more important than legal skills.

The managing partner of Arzinger, Timur Bondarev, also expressed frustration about the current state of Ukrainian politics. He hopes a new generation of lawyers will be part of the solution. “We are a young generation, we see society from a different angle … (the current leaders) don’t think about their children, because their children live somewhere else,” he said.

Bondarev added he is one of many lawyers supporting their former colleague Igor Shevchenko, head of the Meritocratic Party of Ukraine and founder of Shevchenko & Didkovskiy & Partners, now Asters.
Having accomplished his aims in the legal profession Shevchenko said his priorities changed after meeting various world leaders at a Davos conference. “Your mind widens and you want to do something really big,” he said.



Igor Shevchenko

His party advocates social liberalism and valuing people based on merit and achievement. The platform, however, remains somewhat fuzzy, for instance,using Singapore and Georgia as examples of meritocracies.

But while both are praised for their business-friendly, technocratic approach to governance, neither is a particularly good example of democracy. Singapore is rated “partly free” by Freedom House, a think tank, while Georgia has come under criticism for an increasingly dirty parliamentary campaign.

Shevchenko admits this is somewhat tough to reconcile.

“You probably can’t combine full democracy with rapid modernization. But we don’t have full democracy anyway,” he conceded. He said he would prefer a semi-presidential system, but with the president’s party in the majority. “An opposition (majority) in parliament is a source of paralysis,” he said.
Nonetheless, experience shows Ukrainian voters can be tough on political novices, no matter their credentials. Such was the experience of Oleg Riabokon, a founder of the international law firm Magisters and a presidential candidate in the 2010 elections. In 2011, Magisters merged with Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners. Sporting a top notch education, with diplomas from Harvard and Georgetown, Riabokon described himself as a candidate of civil society.



Oleg Riabokon

Results proved merciless, however, with just a fraction of a percent of votes. Riabokon blamed this poor showing on a lack of civic engagement and a tradition of voting based on personalities rather than programs.

“People don’t need civil society. What is most discouraging is that people are not ready to take any action personally,” he said. “There is no sense in political programs. There is no accountability among politicians, because nobody demands it.”

The more I live in this country, the more I think something must be done— Timur Bondarev, managing partner of Arzinger

Ukraine has no shortage of competent leaders, Riabokon said, but the population has to set its values. If someone is involved in corruption, people cannot keep voting them in and expect something different, he explained.

Shevchenko hopes to prevail with hard work. Contrary to Riabokon, who went almost directly from business to a presidential race, Shevchenko is planning to use the current campaign to build a network and raise awareness. Win or lose, he is trying to spark interest in and change public life.
Others are cheering him on. “The more I live in this country, the more I think something must be done. We need new blood,” Bondarev said.
Kyiv Post editor Jakub Parusinski can be reached at [email protected].