Editor’s Note: This op-ed was originally commissioned by the Center for Liberal Modernity (LibMod) for their online magazine Ukraine “Verstehen,” and an abridged version will soon be published by the center in German. It is republished with permission.
A year has flown by since on April 21, 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine by an overwhelming margin. This week the impulsive and unpredictable showman turned politician has invited the controversial former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to bolster his government in the role of a vice prime minister responsible for reform. Coincidence, or are the two connected?
Zelensky swept to power on the promise of delivering real change, of being in real life the crusading reformer he had depicted in a vastly popular political satire “Servant of the People.” He pledged to remove the frustration and disappointment that pervaded the country five years after the EuroMaidan Revolution ousted President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014.
Zelensky undertook to do away with the hypocrisy, corruption, stalled reforms and manipulation of patriotic symbols that for the majority of the voters had come to characterize the presidency of Petro Poroshenko. Moreover, he stressed his determination to end the war with Russia in the Donbas.
The year proved an extremely difficult one for Zelensky and things have certainly not gone the way he had hoped. Yes, certain progress has been made in the direction he wanted, but the obstacles to change proved stronger than he had foreseen. And he himself has had to face up to the mistakes he made and the lessons he should have learned.
Certain progress has been made in the direction he wanted, but the obstacles to change proved stronger than he had foreseen. And he himself has had to face up to the mistakes he made and the lessons he should have learned.
Political naivety, inexperience and failure to create a new solid team of committed and hardened professionals to help him run the country have perhaps been aa major hindrance. More so perhaps than the opposition from entrenched oligarchic and political interests, an unreliable legal system tampered with rather than reformed under Poroshenko, revanchist forces, and the Kremlin’s intransigence.
From the very start it was clear that Zelensky had not come to, or assumed, power in any real sense. As president, enjoying the formal trappings of power, he remained blocked not only by the inhospitable legal environment, but also by the need to secure a majority in the parliamentary elections. He did so in July 2019, but parliament only convened at the end of August.
Since then we have seen: the employment of effective filibustering tactics by his political opponents (whom he only increased and antagonized by not reaching out to some of the political forces amenable to working in alliance with his majority Servant of the People party); the courts remaining far from independent from interested parties; and, the debilitating war that has ensued with his former business partner, rogue oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who because of his personal business interests has placed Ukraine’s vital further cooperation with the International Monetary Fund in doubt.
Domestically, Zelensky’s results have been modest. Problematic laws providing for the lifting of immunity from parliamentary deputies and on the impeachment of the president have been adopted. A hotly contested but much watered-down version of a law lifting the ban on the sale of farmland has also recently been passed. Most importantly perhaps a new electoral code has been adopted which should result in more open and less corrupt elections for a significantly reduced number of seats in the parliament, and the restoration of criminal responsibility for illegal enrichment.
Ending the war with Russia sooner, rather than later, has proved illusory. But Zelensky has nevertheless managed to inject some new impetus into what had hitherto been a moribund Tripartite negotiations processes in Minsk (Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE) and within the broader Normandy Four format involving the leaders of Germany, France Russia and Ukraine. Apart from fine-tuning Kyivs rhetoric, Zelensky has publicly persuaded Putin to acknowledge the need to review some of the stifling provisions of the Minsk accords of 2014-15, secured the release of scores of Ukrainian prisoners held by Russia, and agreed to launch a process of gradual disengagement along the front line.
But Zelensky’s biggest headache has been maintaining order in his own house, politically speaking. He ended up firing his initial closest advisor and chief of staff, the bullish and largely unpopular former lawyer of Kolomoisky, Andriy Bohdan. Yet Bohdan’s replacement, a lawyer formerly specializing in film production, Andriy Yermak, has already generated significant controversy and it is not quite clear why Zelensky, at the cost of sidelining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has entrusted him not only with dealing with the Kremlin but the foreign policy sphere generally. And his own party, especially its majority faction within the parliament, has become increasingly divided and unwieldy.
Zelensky’s ratings in the opinion polls have remained relatively high and respectable. But he, as those around him, are aware that this is not likely to last if he does not begin delivering on the reforms he promised. In early March he signaled that he was aware of this by firing his prime minister and most of the Cabinet of Ministers. But now the country faces the new unforeseen immense challenge posed by the coronavirus pandemic and its devastating impact both on Ukraine’s and the global economies generally.
So at this delicate point Saakashvili is the rabbit that Zelensky has pulled out of his would-be magician’s hat. The veteran Georgian, and more recently Ukrainian politician, still claims the mantle of an uncompromising reformer and his return will spell bad news for Poroshenko, who unceremoniously (and illegally?) kicked him out of Ukraine after they fell out, and oligarchs and local crooks generally.
But letting such a wild cat, rather than rabbit, loose among the pigeons is a huge gamble. It may be what is needed to get things moving again, but the risk might backfire and cause undue problems within Zelensky’s own team. How will this ambitious and headstrong Georgian fit in with the new prime minister who himself is supposed to get reform of the ground, Yermak and even Zelensky himself? A motley crew, it would seem, to say the least.
For the moment though, movement forward has been signaled and that is a good sign. Year two of Zelensky’s term begins with more of the unexpected, which is only to be expected of him. Will the new president and a veteran president be able to work in tandem?
