During his successful presidential campaign, Petro Poroshenko promised "to live in a new way." But when it comes to setting up relatives and friends for cozy jobs, Ukraine is still the same old place in some ways.
“Unfortunately, nepotism hasn’t disappeared from Ukraine completely after regime change, though its scale is not the same as it was,” says Serhiy Leshchenko, a member of parliament and a former journalist.
Former President Viktor Yanukovych’s regime was infamous for monopolizing control over key government institutions and entire economic sectors during his four years in office that ended when he fled power last year during the EuroMaidan Revolution. Yanukvoych escaped to Russia with his two sons, one of whom became a multimillionaire businessman while the other served in parliament.
Poroshenko’s oldest son, Oleksiy, got elected to parliament last fall in a majority constituency in the city of Vinnytsia.
“The election of president’s son in a constituency that was controlled by his father was a decision that did not play well for the rating of the party (Bloc of Petro Poroshenko), and has given reason to claim that the old practices prevail in new politics,” Leshchenko told the Kyiv Post.
Oleksiy Poroshenko, who is now 30, picked a constituency that directly benefits from his father’s confectionery business, which is located there. In an interview with Day newspaper earlier this month, Oleksiy Poroshenko noted that he didn’t hide behind the party electoral list and consciously decided to stand as a candidate on his own in a separate constituency.
“I think of the deputy’s job as of the service to the state,” he was quoted as saying. “And I’m sad when someone sees it as thirst for power, or compares it with the previous president and his family.”
Another difference: Oleksiy Poroshenko is generally praised by his colleagues and observers in his new role in parliament.
Political analyst Taras Berezovets says that nepotism may not apply in the case of elected officials, but it becomes more obvious and potentially problematic in the case of appointed positions.
This seems to be the case with Anton Pashynsky, a 24-year-old son of the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security and Defense Sergiy Pashinsky. In February he was appointed as head of the contracts department in one of the subsidiaries of the state defense holding Ukroboronprom.
Both the father and the son deny that family played any role in his appointment. Serhiy Pashynsky told the Kyiv Post that his son Anton will “serve professionally” and has the required education and background, including service in the National Guard.
According to Anton’s Facebook page, previously he worked in Avangardco agricultural holding as a market analyst. “I consciously changed the well-paid job for work at the state-owned enterprise,” he wrote on March 6.
In his own words, he helps his country by looking for manufacturers of small arms, and recruiting engineers.
Penta think tank expert Volodymyr Fesenko says that nepotism has always been prevalent in Ukraine.
“The Ukrainian nation has no tradition of statehood, no state of consciousness, but has a social network of self-support,” he says. “So family ties and nepotism have become a way of social self-organization.”
In his words, it is a Ukrainian peculiarity to consider the godparent of your child as a relative. Both godparents who christened the same child are also considered related in God.
That’s how Poroshenko is connected with Yuriy Lutsenko, the head of Poroshenko’s Bloc in Parliament.
Presidential chief of staff Borys Lozhkin (L) talkes to President Petro Poroshenko during a meeting on July 9. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
Poroshenko’s wife Maryna and Lutsenko in 2013 became the godparents of Eva, the daughter of Yuriy Stets.
Stets was appointed minister for information in December, just two months after being elected to parliament on Poroshenko Bloc’s ticket.
In its answer to the Kyiv Post inquiry about why Poroshenko picked a lot of his friends for senior positions in the government, his press service said that “the president in his personnel decisions is mainly guided by competence.”
The press service failed to comment on some individual appointments, though. For example, in late December, Poroshenko made 24-year-old Dmytro Vovk acting head of the National Commission of State Energy and Public Utilities Regulation, the main regulator in the energy sector.
Previously Vovk had worked for Roshen, the president’s confectionery giant, as a development sales manager of retail chains in Russia. According to the company’s official statement, Vovk was dismissed because he did not have the right management skills.
Berezovets says that friends and business associates seemed to be favored more than relatives today.
“Authorities appoint people they have known or worked with before,” he says. “Professional qualities are not valued the most, but the fact that you know the person.”
One example of that is Borys Lozhkin, the president’s chief of staff and a former business partner of Poroshenko. They once owned shares in the Ukrainian Media Holding, sold prior to the EuroMaidan Revolution.
“It’s true the president and I have known each other for a long time,” Lozhkin said. “When he suggested to work together, he mentioned that his goal was to depoliticize the office of the president’s chief of staff and to turn it into an effective management tool of the presidency.”
Political analyst Vitaly Bala, head of the Situation Modeling Agency, says Ukraine’s presidents have traditionally relied on close people.
“The thing is (Poroshenko’s) campaign’s slogan was ‘to live in a new way’,” he says. “His task now is to take a second look and start doing things in a really new way.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]
