The recent days of mourning and reflection in Kyiv made me think. I texted friends on Feb. 20 as I was heading to Maidan in the early evening, to ask if anyone wanted to join me there. A couple responded that they feel a part of their soul remains on that square. Another friend told me that he was unable to visit the commemorations, his actions limited by emotion. As was often the case during the revolution, I walked around, mostly alone, but among thousands of friends at the same time.
When I entered Maidan on Feb. 20, I saw three screens showing the faces of people who lost their life in this place, the images were accompanied by the names and ages of the dead, as well as their professional status. The names of these people, the Heavenly Hundred, are known. Whenever Russian propaganda tries to misrepresent the real nature of events in Ukraine from Nov. 21, 2013 to Feb. 22, 2014, they insult the memory of these people.
As I entered the square two of the three images were of women, Antonina Dvoryanits, 62, a pensioner, and Ludmilla Sheremet. I didn’t stay long enough for the image to reveal her age or profession, but Ludmilla looked similar in age to Antonina.
They sacrificed their lives for change. Like everyone else on that square, they demanded reform. How has Ukraine fared in the last three years, have the authorities done enough to meet the demands of Maidan?
In abstract
The term “reform” is often casually thrown around, we see authorities pledging to reform more in the upcoming period. But using “reform” as an abstract term is lazy and does nothing to allow people to understand the transformations that have happened so far that Ukraine can rightly be proud of and should be promoting.
What the authorities should be doing right now is breaking down, detailing, and explaining reform successes to date. At the same time the authorities should also be setting clear reform-oriented goals for the future, the specifics are important here, because talking about “reforms” (past or present) in general terms does not persuade Ukraine’s partners and friends that the country is deserving of more support.
If we allow the conversation on reforms to continue in such a loose way, we enable copywriters and people of influence to present headlines and paragraphs which add up to an impression that the job of reform isn’t even under way.
Celebrate success
In reality, much has changed. Equally, not enough has changed. More needs to be done.
Ukraine’s greatest reform successes can be seen and they affect the lives of ordinary Ukrainians every day. In the early day post-Maidan a special task force of heavily armed officers from Ukraine’s State Security Service raided the offices of the country’s natural gas company, Naftogaz. They removed the mafia that had operated this business and in the process ended corrupt practices that were lining the pockets of that mafia to the tune of billions of dollars.
A key player in the gas business, think of pigs gorging on swill if you like, was Dmytro Firtash. He moved to Austria shortly after the revolution where corruption charges were presented against him, at first his legal team managed to persuade an Austrian judge that the charges against him may have been politically motivated, however on closer examination the Austrian Appeal Court decided that this defence didn’t correspond with reality. Mr. Firtash had been relatively free to move around Vienna thanks to the payment of a $174 million bail amount by Russian billionaire Vasiliy Anisimov. Unsurprisingly we don’t need all six degrees of separation to draw a line from Anisimov to Vladimir Putin. These are complicated matters, and that’s an understatement.
Gas sector reform, a major win. Much has been done too, out of startling necessity, to reform the military hierarchy, some had to be weeded out because they were not loyal to Ukraine, some officers had to be removed from the chain of command because they put their personal interests above that of the men they commanded, stamping out corruption in military requisitions and ensuring that the meagre budget of the state can feed, arm, and clothe the men and women in Ukraine’s armed forces has been a priority reform area. Sadly, it still goes without saying that not enough has been done to look after those who are enduring the hardship of war.
The implementation of an open tender process for government procurement has saved the national budget vast sums of money. ProZorro is an unmitigated success, despite the odd occasions when state run enterprises like UkrSpirt have cancelled ProZorro based contracts in favour of briefcases of cash.
The day to day interaction between the public and members of law enforcement can also be considered to be a way in which the lives of ordinary Ukrainians, the ordinary Ukrainians who stood on Maidan, has greatly improved. In a recent open and very credible selection process, a new Head of the National Police was selected, he will be judged on his actions.
Specific intentions
Instead of talking about “reform” as if it is an abstract concept, it is time to set out specifics. Ukraine needs to analyse problems and to find solutions to those problems, much good work has been done, and in large part this is due to the incredible post-revolution work of civic society initiatives like the Reanimation Package of Reforms, or Change Ukraine, to name but two of dozens of groups lobbying the government.
Clearest obstacle today
The judiciary is holding Ukraine back. Without rule of law Ukraine will not attract the billions of dollars of foreign investment money that is out there looking for a reliable home. The best intentions of brilliant people like Daniel Bilak and Petro Matiaszek in the newly created Ukraine Invest initiative rely on the government acting to ensure that investors can come here with confidence, and know that should they ever have to refer to a court they can expect an unbiased ruling based on the merits of a case. The judiciary in Ukraine, today, is incapable of delivering such a commitment.
I asked a friend of mine, the managing partner of a law firm, to dig up some figures for me to try to quantify the task of reforming the judiciary. In theory there are 9,071 judges “serving” in Ukraine’s trial, appellate, and high/supreme courts, but of that number 7,612 are on roster and the remaining 1,459 seem to be enjoying some kind of sabbatical. At the same time, there are approximately 170,000 qualified lawyers in Ukraine. Is it impossible to persuade 5 percent of those lawyers to accept the great responsibility of participating in further profound change in Ukraine?
The judiciary in Ukraine is well known to be either corrupt or incompetent. No more than a handful of those who presently don robes to preside over a courtroom are respected, or can be relied on to deliver fact-based rulings. This holds Ukraine back, and the matter deserves urgent attention. The judiciary is the key to enabling corrupt practices, still, three years after the revolution ended in such tragic circumstances.
Another urgently needed change is in the way that parliament operates. In recent times we have seen a resurgence in the practice of “piano voting” in the Verkhovna Rada.
This is where one MP pushes buttons to vote on behalf of absent colleagues, and it is a gross violation of democratic principles, as well as the law. Parliament should be required to issue an edict to parliamentarians ordering that this process ends immediately, it should be mandated that any single example of this practice evidenced by video footage would see that member of Parliament suspended for a period of at least a week.
Maybe this order should be named in honour of Antonina Dvoryanits, a hero who died on Maidan in the pursuit of a democratic and fairer future for her country, to tell parliamentarians that they should be mindful of who they work for, because the term “people’s deputy” does not appear, at times, to be a sufficient reminder to them of their obligations.
