Ukraine has the “potential to become a European superpower” but its corrupt, entrenched elite has made it “the poorest country in Europe,” ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said at the Kyiv Post’s annual Tiger Conference in Kyiv on Nov. 29.
Saakashvili, the keynote speaker at the 2016 conference, stepped down as governor of Odesa Oblast on Nov. 7, accusing President Petro Poroshenko of blocking his reform efforts – a claim denied by Poroshenko’s representatives. He later announced plans to launch a political party and called for early parliamentary elections.
Saakashvili argued that changes of government in Ukraine had been meaningless formalities, with the same kleptocratic political class staying in power since 1991 and bleeding the nation dry.
“If you look at what Ukraine’s political class is all about, in every elections we are electing people, and things don’t change and get worse, and the new ones are the same as the old ones,” he said. “The secret is that every new (government) for the last 25 years has been the old one.”
He suggested ousting the corrupt elite and bringing a younger, idealistic and patriotic generation to power.
Saakashvili also proposed halving Ukraine’s bureaucracy, radical economic deregulation and privatization.
“President Poroshenko has twice offered to nominate me as prime minister,” he said. “I wouldn’t agree and said I wanted more than to become prime minister. The natural question was ‘do you want to become president?’ I said ‘no, I want (even) more – to replace the entire political class.’”
Entrenched elite
Saakashvili said Ukraine was a corporation owned by oligarchs.
“The directors change and the CEOs change, but stockholders stay the same, even if their shares are shifting,” Saakashvili said, referring to the country’s oligarchs. “They’ve always decided which political leader to create, which people to show on television, which people to delete from television, which people should be elevated, and which people should be downgraded and thrown into the mud… They really think that Ukraine is their property.”
He said that he had received “zero coverage” on major television channels over the last eight or nine days because Poroshenko and oligarchs who own the media had banned interviews with him.
The Content Analysis Center, a media monitoring group, said on Nov. 28 that television channels Ukraina, ICTV, STB, 1+1, Inter, First National, Fifth Channel and 112 had not covered a rally of up to 2,000 Saakashvili supporters in downtown Kyiv on the previous day.
Failed experiment
Even the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, which overthrew ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, failed to oust Ukraine’s kleptocratic elite, Saakashvili said.
“After the second Maidan people took power away from Yanukovych,” he said. “They looked around and saw all the same faces, maybe more civilized ones (than under Yanukovych). They gave power to them – and the experiment didn’t work.”
Thanks to its corrupt establishment, Ukraine has turned from a country with a similar gross domestic product to Poland in 1991 into a much poorer and less advanced country now, Saakashvili said. Ukraine ranked 113th in the world and second poorest in Europe after Moldova in terms of GDP per capita in 2015, while Poland was 44th, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Zero tolerance
But Ukraine has a huge territory and a highly educated workforce, which could boost its economy, Saakashvili said.
“Ukraine shall become a great European nation,” he said. “From that standpoint, we are approaching a turning point.”
Saakashvili argued that if real reforms are carried out, Ukraine can “have double-digit growth for at least the next 10 years.”
A major aspect of Saakashvili’s program is “zero tolerance for corruption.” He argued that electronic asset declarations for Ukrainian officials, which were launched on Oct. 30, had exposed their amazingly corrupt lifestyle.
“People are saying it’s a great step forward that Ukraine published e-declarations,” he said. “But if it’s a big step forward then it’s a big step into sh*t.”
Saakashvili also argued that the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office had stymied the newly-created National Anti-Corruption Bureau by blocking 90 percent of major graft cases. Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, denied the accusations in a Nov. 18 interview with the Dzerkalo Tyzhnya newspaper, arguing that slow progress in some cases was due to a lack of evidence and legal grounds.
Full cleanup
Saakashvili also called for a “full cleanup of the state apparatus” and halving the number of Ukrainian civil servants.
He spoke against “copycatting” some European laws without taking into account the differences between Western and Ukrainian bureaucrats.
The civil service law of Ukraine, which has a notoriously corrupt bureaucracy, was borrowed from Slovenia, whose government is much less prone to graft, he said. As a result of the law, it has become very difficult to fire corrupt officials and hire better ones, Saakashvili said.
“It’s a disaster,” he said. “It’s just finally killing the public service.”
Useless regulations
Saakashvili also said that “at least 70 to 80 percent of Ukraine’s regulations should be scrapped” because “they’re absolutely useless.”
He suggested a radical overhaul of education and healthcare, including the privatization of clinics and hospitals. “In Georgia, we fully abolished the state healthcare system,” Saakashvili added. “Public hospitals don’t work.”
State companies should also be privatized, he said, adding that effectively they are owned not by the state, but by corrupt politicians and officials, who profiteer from them.
“These are not state enterprises,” he said. “They belong to (lawmakers Mykola) Martynenko, (Ihor) Kononenko, (Andriy) Ivanchuk and others.”
Martynenko, Kononenko and Ivanchuk have denied corruption accusations.
Previously Saakashvili has also accused Oleksandr Tretyakov, a lawmaker and top ally of Poroshenko, of using parliament to remove competitors and monopolize the lottery business. Tretyakov’s representatives could not comment immediately.
Saakashvili told the Kyiv Post on Nov. 19 that the government was a club of businesspeople who were using their power to crack down on their competitors.
“They’re destroying their competitors in business,” he said. “The problem is that Poroshenko sees every businessman as his competitor.”
Saakashvili also lambasted Ukraine’s ban on the sale of agricultural land, which he sees as a way for corrupt bureaucrats to profiteer on allocating land.
“Land is being traded in Ukraine, let’s tell the truth,” he said, referring to shady land allocation schemes run by officials. “Don’t we know that we can buy and sell land in Ukraine? For that you need prosecutors, lawmakers and judges – somebody who also can be part of the transaction.”
Strong government
To carry out the proposed reforms, Ukraine needs a centralized government, Saakashvili said. He argued that decentralization could not be a way out of the deadlock, as it would effectively mean the “decentralization of chaos and corruption.”
Corrupt local governments in Ukraine are eliminating cultural heritage, including in the cities of Chernivtsi and Odesa, and destroy business with red tape, he said.
“Chernivtsi is one of the most beautiful places in the world and one of the most underdeveloped, shabby and neglected,” he said. “… And the best buildings in Odesa are being demolished as we speak on a daily basis because the local government is deeply corrupt and thuggish.”
Saakashvili said that decentralization could work only after the central government carries out radical reforms.
“Ukraine has a very big but extremely weak government, as well as a weak president, a very weak prime minister, and a very volatile, unstable and unproductive Rada,” he said. “…You need a strong government with a vision, honesty and clean hands.”
