Yet in a disturbing trend of growing self-seclusion, President Viktor Yanukovych on June 6 decided not to bother. Instead, he sent a voluminous 570-page document to lawmakers, and went to Serbia for a state visit, leaving the legislative branch of government to ponder what this was all about.
This audaciously strange way of delivering a national progress report, once again, highlights the lack of communication and coordination between branches of power. It also reflects a bigger picture: incommunicado between the authorities and the Ukrainian public, and it’s growing.
A case in point was when the prime minister’s team decided to organize a large conference on key issues related to investment, business and the economy. Planned for 1,000 people, it saw 1.5 times that number register in the first week, according to one of the organizers. This shows the degree of desperation in society to be heard by the government.
The president’s address to the nation also clearly shows the bubble of isolation in which the authorities live. To summarize, his team of economists and aides tried spinning the lot of gloomy 2012 statistics into achievements, growth and improvement.
“The policy of reform has already brought a positive effect,” the president wrote in his address without providing details. “Ukraine has restrained the negative influence of the European depression of 2012. In many countries of the world the level of life has significantly declined. In Ukraine we have managed to prevent it.”
The president’s team must have felt they needed to keep a poker face, but there is evidence it’s not working. The Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a respected independent think tank in Ukraine, released a new poll on June 5 that shows only 6.5 percent of Ukrainians fully trust the president. By contrast, 45 percent do not trust him at all.
The president’s (and the broader government’s) failure to admit problems, to communicate them to the people and seek solutions jointly does not help anyone, least of all the president himself, who is now too accustomed to hiding from the public behind the tall fence of his Mezhyhirya residence.
