Degradation of the Current Authorities Has Led to Dozens of Empty Seats in Government

Degradation of the current authorities has led to dozens of empty seats in government

The government is in collapse. Some top-level vacancies have gone unfilled for years. It benefits the incumbent president to keep officials in limbo, which makes them obedient instruments in the hands of curators from the presidential administration. Some offices are empty because political clans cannot agree among themselves on candidates.

Appointments made by quota have turned politics into a marketplace where contestants compete by the thickness of their corrupt wallets and by ratings won thanks to oligarch-owned television channels.

To date, three ministries in the government do not have full-fledged heads.

Minister without a ministry Yuriy Stets submitted his resignation on 31 May. Here is another vacancy, although the need to create such a ministry was highly questionable and instead looked like the president’s desire to find a job for his godfather and media manager. And after three years no one can say for sure what this ministry actually does.

The situation with the Ministry of Health is absurd. There has been no full-fledged minister here for... more than two years. Back in the Yatsenyuk government the then-minister Oleksandr Kvitashvili announced his resignation on 2 July 2015. He cited constant pressure on the ministry from the pharmaceutical mafia and members of parliament. Six months later Kvitashvili withdrew his resignation for a few weeks, but on 14 April 2016 he was finally dismissed along with the entire Yatsenyuk government.

Since then the post has remained vacant – the duties of the minister are carried out by Ulana Suprun, who is not submitted for parliamentary approval due to fears of a boycott by the very lobby that could defeat her candidacy.

What is happening around the Ministry of Health is a telling illustration of the corrupt conspiracies that have infected Ukrainian politics.

Also, Ukraine has lacked a full head of the State Fiscal Service for almost half a year. The current acting head, Myroslav Prodan, was appointed on 3 March after the arrest of Roman Nasirov. Prodan is a Groysman man, but Bankova, which by the Constitution is deprived of influence over the government’s economic policy, is not bothered by that. They have always considered the tax service and customs their feeding troughs.

For half a year Poroshenko’s circle has been making every effort to remove Prodan and install their own person as head of the fiscal service. The president’s main favorite is his former auditor Nina Yuzhanina. That is precisely why a competition to fill the DFS head vacancy has not been announced.

President Poroshenko also cannot decide on the head of the National Bank. Valeria Gontareva announced her resignation on 10 April with the intention of leaving the post in 10 May, but still no one has been nominated to replace her.

Bargaining continues for the chair that the Constitution defines as apolitical and independent. On one hand, Poroshenko wants an obedient executor there. On the other hand, he will not be able to push such a person through parliament without cost, which must vote for the National Bank head. So votes will have to be paid for with flows and posts, and the NBU head has become a hostage of total commercialization of politics.

Similarly, there is still no head of the State Property Fund – the previous head Ihor Bilous resigned on 10 April, but no one has been appointed in his place. Even though the Fund manages thousands of state enterprises that have become corrupt feeding troughs.

Parliament went on recess without appointing an ombudsman. The term of the current ombudsman Valeria Lutkovska expired on 27 April 2017. The current People's Front deputy Lyudmyla Denisova has set her sights on the post. But this caused protests from the international community – the ombudsman is supposed to be outside politics. There was no certainty of votes for Denisova, so the entire session the parliament devoted to changing the voting method to make independent voting for the ombudsman impossible.

Another independent body, the Accounting Chamber, is not functioning at all, even though in every civilized country it audits the State Budget’s funds. The mandates of the members of this state body expired six years ago!

And the head of the Accounting Chamber, Roman Mahuta, is even a suspect in an NABU investigation over housing fraud – he was even placed under house arrest.

Parliament cannot replace the composition of the Accounting Chamber either, because the leaders of the two ruling factions – the Petro Poroshenko Bloc and the People's Front – cannot agree on quotas. Valeriy Patskan from BPP and Ruslan Lukyanchuk, close to Turchynov, are vying to head the Accounting Chamber.

And the story of the Central Election Commission has become an example of international shame, as foreign observers grew tired of reminding that the CEC needs to be changed.

On 12 the terms of office of the commission’s 15 members expired as far back as 1 June 2014. That is, they should have been replaced three years ago – including CEC chair Mykhailo Okhendovsky, who is also under NABU investigation.

A similar picture exists in the Verkhovna Rada itself, where six committees do not have their own chairs.

Since 27 November 2014 the chairmanship of the Rules Committee has been vacant – it was simply taken out of the ranking distribution and handed as another quota personally to Mykola Martynenko, who put his subordinate Pavlo Pynzenyk in the chair, turning the committee into a rehabilitation body for corrupt deputies.

The chair of the parliamentary Energy Committee is also vacant – since about a year and a half ago when Martynenko himself resigned under pressure from investigations.

For more than a year the Parliament has had no full leaders of the Agricultural Policy Committee – its head Taras Kutovyi managed to serve as Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food and left the government, and no one was appointed in his place. The Ecology Committee has had no chair since March last year, when Mykola Tomenko was deprived of his parliamentary mandate for leaving the BPP faction. There has been no chair of the Eurointegration Committee for a year, since Iryna Herashchenko became First Deputy Speaker.

Likewise, for a year they have been unable to appoint a chair of the Science and Education Committee; the previous chair Liliya Hrynevych became a minister. The Parliament has no full head of the Privatization Control Commission, and not even a head of the Verkhovna Rada’s administrative apparatus.

All these examples are visible evidence of the collapse of power. When politics has devolved into primitive money-making, there are not enough votes for worthy candidates. Appointments are made on a tit-for-tat basis, and positions have become the currency of settlement. And that means this government won’t last long.

Author: Serhiy Leshchenko