The political bloc of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is currently on a mission to delegitimize the new administration in Brussels.
In articles and statements, her supporters present an apocalyptic picture of today’s Ukraine, urging the European Union to consider threatening Kyiv with sanctions such as those recently imposed on Belarus. One recent article published on the EUobserver website talks about “severe restrictions on democracy and civil liberties … absolute control of parliament … pressure on journalists and civil activists … new criminal prosecutions with a clear political motivation.”
These fantasies and unconfirmed allegations are an attempt to hoodwink the international community into believing that Ukraine is becoming some kind of police state. In fact, what is happening in Ukraine today can be described in one word: stabilization.
Simply put, democracy cannot survive without public order and the rule of law. Without these two elements a country will sooner or later fall into mayhem.
Achieving stability after a period of lawlessness, in Ukraine or anywhere else, means two things: order replacing chaos and fighting against corruption at all levels.
Two years ago Ukraine was in a very bad place, bordering on anarchy. The president was fighting with the prime minister while the prime minister was fighting with her governors. One crisis followed another with almost total disrespect for the rule of law. This vicious circle led to a gas crisis, which almost resulted in Ukraine becoming a gas slave to the Kremlin.
Events in Ukraine left many in the international community flabbergasted. Even the highly diplomatic European Commission President, Jose Manuel Barroso, described Ukraine’s leadership as worse than that of some African chiefs.
While foreign leaders were being dragged into Ukraine’s political wars, the mass media presented this comedy, or rather tragedy, into a sensational spectacle for the world to enjoy – the final humiliation for a country sinking into a quagmire of corruption and economic disaster. If this shambles can be called democracy, then I am against such a thing.
In 2007 the EU demanded that Ukraine fulfill four conditions:
1) normalization of relations between different branches of power;
2) stabilization of relations with Russia;
3) economic reforms;
4) the fight against corruption.
Today, when all the EU demands are being met, Ukraine is suddenly being accused of rolling back on democracy. Is this not hypocrisy? Yes, Ukraine has problems. But discussions about democracy cannot be conducted on the basis of: “If the party of my friends is in power then it is democracy, but if it is my opponents in power then it is not.”
The previous administration talked a lot about democracy and EU integration. But democracy is historically rooted in the middle class. And the previous leaders, according to Ukraine’s Gorshenin Institute, saw the middle class erode from 9.3 percent of Ukrainian society to 7.4 percent due to the spread of corruption and red tape. If corruption is defeated – or at least significantly weakened – in different spheres of Ukrainian life, this will give a powerful impulse toward democratic development for Ukrainian society and its economy.
The swamp of impunity and corruption had to be drained and this involves investigating representatives of both the previous and the current governments.
Currently, more than 350 officials from our government, including a number of senior figures like a former governor and head of the Crimean parliament, Party of Regions member Anatolii Hrytsenko, are under investigation, compared to 73 persons from Tymoshenko’s party, BYuT. Can this be called selective justice?
In 1990 Korea indicted two former presidents for corruption. Italy went through a similar process in the 1970s. Today, Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania are undergoing similar reforms. If none of this is undemocratic, then why is an investigation into Tymoshenko, openly accused of corruption even while in office, presented as an outrage? Is it because her party is a member of the European People’s Party? Is European People’s Party membership a license for corruption?
There is a big difference between Yanukovych and Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenka. It is comparable to the difference between Franco in Spain and De Gaulle in France – both were accused of not respecting democratic norms. But if Franco wanted to conserve the past, de Gaulle was trying to build the future.
I am a Ukrainian patriot, and I consider appeals to the EU to introduce sanctions as absurd. Ukraine needs reforms to survive, not for the sake of Yanukovych, but first and foremost for the Ukrainian people. Ukraine’s politicians should be judged by their actions. Those who try to manipulate international opinion to harm the reform process have no future in Ukraine.
Oleh Voloshyn is director for information of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. A version of this article was first published on the EUobserver website on Feb. 8, and it is reprinted with permission from the author.
