You're reading: Nepotism

It doesn’t take much in the way of professional qualifications to become a deputy minister in Ukraine. Often, just having a cool relative in the right place will do.

Mykola Korovitsyn, for example, only served as a parliamentarian’s aide for four years before he moved up the power ladder to become a deputy emergencies minister in March.

No, he doesn’t have a relevant degree or experience in the field to justify the 30-year-old’s appointment. But he does have a relevant entry in his biography that goes well with his new job: his mother is Hanna Herman, deputy chief of the Presidential Administration and a longtime ally of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

 

Hanna Herman and son Mykola Korovitsyn are both in positions of power. She serves as deputy head of the Presidential Administration. He is deputy emergencies minister. (Artem Zhavrotsky, www.pravda.com.ua)

“There are no other clips that would hold power together,” said Vadym Karasiov, head of the Global Strategies Institute in Kyiv. “Most people get appointed more out of loyalty and less for their experience. It’s like a tribe where all members stick up for each other. And everyone else outside the tribe is an enemy.”

After attending an automobile college and economics school, Korovitsyn landed a job with lawmaker Taras Chornovil from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. Chornovil, now unaffiliated, says that Korovitsyn wasn’t helping him with lawmaking at all.

“In accordance with the setup, he worked in the party headquarters. I don’t know exactly what he did there. Perhaps he drove his mother around and carried her coat. But it definitely wasn’t connected with emergency situations,” said Chornovil, son of the late Soviet dissident and lawmaker Vyacheslav Chornovil.

 

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (R), managed to get his 25-year old son, Viktor, a seat in parliament.

 

Former President Viktor Yushchenko’s brother, Petro (L), is a parliament deputy. His son, Yaroslav Yushchenko was until recently deputy head of Kharkiv’s Oblast administration. (Dmytro Larin, tabloid.com.ua)

 

Elina Shyshkina (L), daughter of Constitutional Court judge Viktor Shyshkin, is a lawmaker in the bloc of ex-Premier Yulia Tymoshenko, shown at far right in the photo. Accused murderer Viktor Lozinsky, (second from left), a former member of the Tymoshenko bloc, is in jail awaiting trial on suspicion of killing Valeriy Oliynyk on June 16.

Another newly-appointed deputy in the same Emergencies Ministry is Andriy Bondarenko. He is married to Party of Regions Deputy Olena Bondarenko. Clearly a lesser insult to meritocracy, he worked in the Donetsk regional emergencies administration and did academic research in the field of work safety prior to the appointment.

“I wouldn’t dare speak against his [Bondarenko’s] suitability,” said Chornovil. “But Korovitsyn’s appointment contradicts the law on civil service where it says that an applicant must have certain work experience and knowledge in a certain field [related to the job.] And Korovitsyn has zero days, zero hours and zero minutes of required work experience. It’s the most absurd appointment.”

Emergencies Minister Nestor Shufrych, at a news conference on April 13, wasn’t eager to discuss controversial subjects. “I will make political comments when the flooding is over,” he said during a press briefing on high waters.

Earlier on this same day, Shufrych appointed another family member from the Yanukovych-loyal pool. Volodymyr Bodelan, son of Odesa ex-Mayor Ruslan Bodelan, to head the Odesa emergencies office. The link in this family album gets complicated by the father’s alleged criminal history. Bodelan senior fled Ukraine amid charges of office abuse in 2005. He adopted Russian citizenship and waited out the storm in St. Petersburg until Yanukovych became president. Suddenly stripped of all charges, he returned to Odesa on April 9, with his son landing the high post only a few days later.

“I am fully confident in the situation in the ministry. I appoint people who are competent and know how to do their job. As for Bodelan’s family, they have suffered enough during these five years,” said Shufrych, conspicuously dropping Ukrainian and switching to Russian to answer the question.

As for Korovitsyn, his mother in earlier interviews said she would resign if her son did something wrong. “Even though I didn’t create any preferences for him and never asked anyone for him, I am still responsible for this human’s steps,” Herman said.

Political analyst Karasiov, however, has a different view. “In 18th-century England and feudal France, people used to buy posts and ranks. Ukraine is still living by these practices because its laws are not working No one’s organizing tests and open competitions for civil servants. Politicians appoint their own people who they know from 20-30 years of drinking and eating together, and going to the sauna and hunting together,” Karasiov added.

It’s not just the Party of Regions that takes care of its relatives. Other parties present in parliament are just as bad.

Ex-President Viktor Yushchenko’s brother, Petro, was elected to parliament in 2002. Yushchenko’s nephew, Yaroslav, became deputy governor of Kharkiv Oblast in 2005 when he was only 24.

This March, ex-Presidential Chief of Staff Vira Ulyanchenko woke up to her husband’s appointment as deputy education minister. His name is Viktor Ivchenko. It turns out he had worked under Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, a Yushchenko foe, before and did not mind cooperating again.

Yushchenko said that his “life would be much easier” if Ivchenko declined the offer. The whole situation looks even more absurd with Ivchenko’s wife on a mission to take down her husband’s boss – controversial Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk. Whether Ivchenko is her no-longer-secret weapon remains to be seen.

Ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s ranks also expose some legatees. Daughter of a constitutional court judge, Elina Shyshkina, became a parliament deputy on Tymoshenko’s party list when she was only 24 and still writing her university dissertation. Critics say that her appointment looked like a “thank you” to the court judge Viktor Shyshkin, who was appoitned to the constitutional court in 2005.

“There are no scandals over these appointments because it was happening under previous governments as well,” Karasiov said. “Anywhere you go, there is a clan.”

Seemingly to mask blood ties, sometimes they change surnames by one letter, as could be the case with brothers Valentyn Landyk, and Volodymyr Landik, both lawmakers.

However, even politicians can have smart kids. And it’s a worldwide fact. Modern American politics features many family trees: the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Powells, and the Cheneys among many others. But nepotism in the U.S. can provoke severe attacks, unlike Ukraine, where it barely causes a stir with a population that has long tuned out of its rotten and dysfunctional domestic politics.

Karasiov said that one way to limit nepotism is by opening party lists – making public the list of candidates on a political party’s slate – during elections. If that were done during the 2007 parliamentary election, voters would have seen that by choosing the Regions Party, they would also make one of Yanukovych’s two sons a parliament deputy at the age of 25.

“As long as they come to power together with their drivers, secretaries, nephews and sisters, this country will never succeed,” concludes Karasiov.

Kyiv Post staff writer Yuliya Popova can be reached at [email protected].

Read also Yulia Popova’s related story “Key government posts often go to relatives, cronies”.