He has to wear a monitor bracelet that electronically transmits signals of his whereabouts to on-duty police. He was allotted this privileged confinement because he had complained of a sudden heart condition and was brought before a judge on a stretcher. It may have been done to soften his potential sentence of a maximum 10 years in prison, confiscation of property and a three-year ban from holding public office.
Then Melnyk escapes from house arrest and disappears into thin air, while the police take their time responding to the alarm signal. They have no idea where the alleged heart patient has gone. The bracelet – part of a batch that cost Ukrainian tax payers Hr 19.1 million – proved to be of no use.
This story, first and foremost, speaks about police incompetence. But it also reflects many of society’s problems in just a single case study. The actual character allows one to take a glimpse at the quality of the political elite. The 56-year-old man has been a prominent figure in the Party of Regions for a long time.
Elected to two parliamentary terms, he was a very visible member of the ruling party, and headed its Kyiv region branch for a long time. People with this type of CV tend to develop a sense of impunity for their actions. And, indeed, this seems to have been the case with Melnyk who in 2012 thought nothing of physically lifting a female parliament member off the ground in an attempt to remove her from a polling station during a flawed mayoral by-election in Kyiv Oblast.
Worse still, this man was head of an educational institution for years – the one that prepares the nation’s tax collectors. If his guilt is proven in court, it will be pretty obvious how his students were allegedly admitted – with the help of money, not virtues, planting one of many seeds in the young minds about how the state system operates. These would be the same people who find employment in the very same state system. They would continue the vicious cycle. So, next time the tax inspector comes banging on your door, just remember what sort of mentors they had.
