Ukraine’s best hope to drive out corruption?
President-elect faces Herculean tasks as political newcomer to institute reforms
Something exceptional happened last week when 73 per cent of Ukrainians voted for a reform candidate, 41-year-old political newcomer Volodymyr Zelenskiy. And he hopes to take the country to its next level, building on the shoulders of the two gigantic street protests in 2004 and 2014 that drove out corrupt presidents, but not the corruption itself.
As Zelenskiy noted, in his debate with President Petro Poroshenko on April 19, Ukraine is Europe’s poorest nation with its richest president.
As an activist and journalist, I’m guardedly optimistic.
Optimistic because Ukrainians are smart and dogged and risk takers, but guarded because the political and oligarchic elite won’t easily relinquish its iron grip on the country of 44 million. Neither will Russia. It started a war in 2014 by invading Ukraine and still occupies seven per cent of its land mass.
Zelenskiy, who studied to be a lawyer and played the role of a president in a Ukrainian political satire television series, faces a Herculean task. He has gathered a team from Ukraine’s civil society, technocratic reformers and entrepreneurs.
He has received pledges of support from the United States, Germany, France, the European Union and others critical to success.
This is because the whole world is watching Ukraine, ground zero in the Cold War 2.0 against Vladimir Putin. The Russian invasion has cost 13,000 lives, displaced 1.5 million people, and forced Ukraine to build, through conscription and volunteers, the second largest military in Europe of 200,000 soldiers.
Ukraine protects the eastern wall of Europe against a pariah state that would, if allowed, gobble up Ukraine to the Polish border and beyond. Without Ukraine, winter will come.
This is Ukraine’s burden. Former Soviet vassals such as Poland or Lithuania have become prosperous and democratic under the tutelage of the European Union, but Ukraine struggles.
Canada is the biggest “Slavic” country outside of Europe, with millions who are partially or fully of Ukrainian, Polish, Czech or Slovakian descent.
Canada was the first nation to recognize Ukraine’s independence from Russia. Everyone agrees that Ukraine deserves better.
It is the biggest nation in Europe, larger than France, and the third most-educated country in the world excelling in IT, math, engineering and sciences, not to mention its trove of natural resources that includes the biggest deposit of the world’s richest, blackest earth.
But the country’s biggest export has been talent.
Millions have left since 1991, with five million young Ukrainians living in Europe as reforms remain stillborn.
President-elect Zelenskiy has said he is willing to meet with Putin to reset the peace process, but this is far from certain. He takes office on June 3, then must organize a campaign to win seats in parliament this fall. He must build a political party or a coalition or be stranded and blocked by the oligarchs who currently “own” the parliament.
He has already articulated an initial agenda: staying with the IMF’s stabilization program; removal of immunity for politicians and judges; rolling out an anticorruption court and reform of the judicial and prosecutorial systems; antitrust laws to bust up the oligarchy; five-per-cent corporate taxes to attract foreign direct investment; land reform; nationalization of thousands of government entities; and transparency in military procurement.
But the public must remain steadfast, along with the West.
Billions from the IMF and EU await a Ukraine operating under the rule of law.
Germany has also pledged a Marshall Plan involving billions more.
It should have surprised no one that Ukrainians voted for change. This was the electoral equivalent of the massive street protests of 2004 and 2014 that started the transition.
Ukrainians fight for social and economic justice and peace.
They are surely the world’s most deserving champions.
The public must remain steadfast ... Billions from the IMF and EU await a Ukraine operating under the rule of law.