Ukraine: Poroshenko becoming another Yanukovych

[MikeWB]

The Feb. 3 resignation of Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius may, once and for all, expose Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko as the fraud that he is on the reform front – something most Ukrainians figured out long ago, judging from the polls.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk is also to blame, slightly less so, because people never elected him to this job and he has fewer powers than Poroshenko.
Poroshenko has in several ways abused the trust placed in him by Ukrainian voters who put him in office by a landslide on May 25, 2014.
His chutzpah is amazing, considering the fate of predecessors who betrayed the national interest, most recently Moscow resident Viktor Yanukovych, who couldn't get out of Ukraine fast enough on Feb. 21, 2014, once he realized that flight was the only way to save his life.
The dreams of the EuroMaidan Revolution have been blocked by two years of Poroshenko's oh-so-clever obstructions. Poroshenko acts as if the rest of us are too stupid to figure out what is happening. I predict Ukrainians will soon bring severe consequences on him for his arrogant betrayals.
I hate to agree with billionaire oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, but he was more right than wrong when he told Politico on Dec. 21 that the only difference between Poroshenko and Yanukovych is "a good education, good English and lack of a criminal record." Otherwise, both are "craven to absolute power."
Oligarchs down, not out
Poroshenko pledged to dismantle the oligarchy. He did not. The old oligarchy may be down, due to a war-induced recession, but they are not out. And the president is getting richer and so are his allies, if Abromavicius is to be believed. If anything, a new oligarchy is forming under his control.
Abromavicius quit, alleging that a top Poroshenko ally in parliament, Ihor Kononenko, was scheming to install his loyalists in charge of key state-owned enterprises. Abromavicius had been pushing hard to sell as many as 1,500 state-owned enterprises, which have been milked by insiders, including several under the Economy Ministry's management. But if Abromavicius is right, Kononenko and others want to keep stealing from these enterprises. Kononenko denies any wrongdoing.
But in an incredible resignation statement, Abromavicius said that Kononenko pressed for "his candidates to take the position of CEOs at state-owned Ukrhimtransammiak, in which he seems to have a stake...he failed to support me in removing (Victor) Bondyk, who is affiliated with the (Yanukovych-led) Party of Regions, as CEO. Instead, Kononenko ensured his associates were appointed to senior positions and joined the old CEO in running the company as they see fit.
"Through a crony of his in the parliament, Kononenko attempted to influence key appointments in the state-owned Derzhzovnishinform, in metal powder factories, and the National Accreditation Agency. This entire rampage culminated in Kononenko's desire to have his personal deputy minister of economy – one responsible for Naftogaz and other state-owned companies," Abromavicius said.
No rule of law
Poroshenko promised to change the corrupt and useless criminal justice system. He did not.
Instead, he and Yatsenyuk have proven skillful in obstructing changes – especially when their allies attempted to jeopardize the independence of new anti-corruption bodies.
The obstructionism ensures that corruption – old and new – will remain unpunished.
I have interviewed each of these three ministers who resigned – Agriculture Minister Oleksiy Pavlenko, Infrastructure Minister Andriy Pyvovarsky and Abromavicius. Each of them sent criminal cases against Yanukovych-era predecessors to the prosecutor's office, only to have them sink into a black hole. Each of them complained about the bureaucracy and about their inability to fire corrupt managers of state-owned enterprises. While they didn't complain about Poroshenko or Yatsenyuk during the interviews I had with them, it seemed clear to me that they weren't getting the backing they needed.
Ukraine's top political leaders will simply not give up their power to decide who goes to jail and who doesn't and leave these issues to judges, prosecutors, and police – or better yet, citizen juries.
So Poroshenko keeps a useless prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who leads 15,000 useless prosecutors.
Poroshenko keeps 9,000 judges, most of whom are useless and corrupt as well.
Yatsenyuk keeps a useless interior minister, Arsen Avakov.
And meanwhile, allegations of corruption – yes, all denied – swirl around Shokin, Avakov and too many police, prosecutors and judges to name.
Bottom line: Law enforcement has delivered nothing but injustice two years after the EuroMaidan Revolution. And as long as they get to call the shots, that's the way Poroshenko and Yatensyuk want it.
Keeps his assets
But Poroshenko's deception goes farther. He promised to sell his business assets, including Channel 5, but did not.
He keeps doing business with the nation that has waged war against Ukraine and stolen Crimea. He also, with a wink and a nod, allowed Ukrainians to keep trading with Russian-occupied Crimea until activists last fall erected a blockade.
Poroshenko's deception continues at home and abroad.
At home, he gives interviews mainly to controllable journalists.
Abroad, he counts on answering questions from foreign journalists who don't have an in-depth knowledge of Ukraine's situation to pose harder questions.
So he gets away with such generalities as this in an interview with German's Bild newspaper this month:
"We have implemented many reforms, in the police, in the fight against corruption, in the army, in decentralization process, in economy as a whole, but of course we want faster progress. But please do not forget that we have been suffering from a war for one and a half years now. Without the war, without Russian troops in the east of Ukraine, we would already have made much more progress with our reforms."
The answer is very revealing as to why Poroshenko hasn't faced a revolution yet. Russia is at war against Ukraine, so the public is more patient with this president. But every time he is criticized about his failure to attack corruption, he uses the war as an excuse, another abuse of his public trust.
Dishonesty
When he can't bluff his way through interviews, he lies. We haven't forgotten his Wall Street Journal op-ed of June 10, 2015, when he wrote: "Over the past year, 2,702 former officials have been convicted of corruption."
To this day, the Presidential Administration cannot even name one of those officials – let alone 2,702.
Poroshenko is very comfortable in the world of Ukraine's corruption and oligarchs. He was a co-founder of Yanukovych's Party of Regions. And now his hand-picked prosecutor general is letting them all off the hook for – by the government's own estimates –up to $40 billion in theft during Yanukovych's rule.
And so, they are reconstituting themselves. Parliament is still filled with old Yanukovych top dogs – Yuriy Boyko and Serhiy Lyovochkin among them – as corruption allegations against them go uninvestigated and unprosecuted.
Yanukovych's front man, the exiled fugitive Serhiy Kurchenko, continues to own one of Ukraine's largest media empires from abroad, because prosecutors are too corrupt or inept to figure out how to remove him.
The list goes on and on.
If Poroshenko keeps this up, the Party of Regions is going to reconstitute itself and try to buy its way into power again. The president seems to think he can bluster his way past the Abromavicius resignation as he did previous ones. Elected officials are doing everything in their power to avoid early elections, because many of them know they cannot win.
I don't think the stall tactics will work this time. Abromavicius' resignation is a turning point. Sooner rather than later Poroshenko will face judgment day from his people and the verdict will be brutal unless he performs a 180-degree turn and does so quickly.

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