You’ve got to hand it to President Petro Poroshenko. In a perverse way, the Ukrainian leader keeps coming up with new ways to explain why he is failing to lead an anti-corruption drive in Ukraine — and is actually the obstructionist-in-chief.
Here’s his new argument for why Ukraine doesn’t need an independent anti-corruption court in Ukraine: Only corrupt African and Asian countries — he named Kenya, Uganda, Malaysia — have them, not Western democracies. He tested it out at a Sept. 14 closed-door meeting of 300 business leaders, organized by the European Business Association and American Chamber of Commerce of Ukraine. (The Kyiv Post is a member of both organizations, but somehow I didn’t get the invitation.) Apparently, it worked so well with that friendly crowd that he decided to do it again at the opening of the 14th annual Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv on Sept. 15.
Poroshenko gave his forgettable, often-repeated stock speech, then took a few questions from moderator Richard Haass, president of the Council of Foreign Relations, and a few questions from the reserved section of the audience — but only a few.
In his remarks, he asked those in the audience to raise their hands if they’re from a country with an anti-corruption court.
Almost no one raised their hand. I did, but evidently he didn’t see me right in front of him in the sixth row.
You see, Poroshenko crowed, if your countries don’t have an anti-corruption court, why should this be demanded from Ukraine?
A person could drive a very large truck through the logic and honesty of the president.
Quite simply, had I had the chance to respond, I would have said that Western democracies have trusted judicial institutions that deliver results in the fight against corruption and crime.
Ukraine’s judicial system under Poroshenko, as under all previous presidents, has delivered nothing — no convictions of for any corruption, for any murder, nothing.
And, in America at least, there is a provision for appointing independent investigators and prosecutors, and courts hear important cases expeditiously. In Ukraine, cases get opened up, as Poroshenko noted. But still, no convictions – and there won’t be, except perhaps of political opponents. The reason is simple: Ukraine’s politicians don’t want an independent judicial system.
Poroshenko doesn’t even know what he wants, other than to sound good and keep fooling the people. His low ratings among Ukrainians show he is fooling no one. He is in big danger of going the way of Viktor Yushchenko in losing re-election.
He said he had registered a law for an anti-corruption court in parliament – after more than three years in power? Then he said it’s not the name that’s important, it’s whether the court is independent and trustworthy and brings results. With that, he seemed to favor his anti-corruption chamber of existing courts, which are politically subservient and corrupt.
Oh, but it takes too long to create an independent anti-corruption court, Poroshenko said. He wants to deliver justice to his people now. That’s laughable – since he could have stopped obstructing justice in the first place and, instead, pushed for genuine reform of police, prosecutors and judges, he might have a few convictions under his belt.
But, more than three years after the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, 2014, Ukraine has not convicted a single person of any consequence for corruption or murder.
Poroshenko also wants the international audience to believe his ongoing fiction that the new Supreme Court being picked (after a 1.5 year delay) will be substantially different from the old, corrupt court. That’s not the way that most independent observers see it.
He repeated again his favorite success story of the creation of new independent anti-corruption institutions such as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. But he omitted the criticism from its head, Artem Sytynk, that he has reached a dead-end because he has no independent, reliable judges to hear the case he is filing.
So when it comes to the anti-corruption fight, Poroshenko is many things — the Great Imitator, the Great Joker, the Great Imposter, the Great Fake. But he is not the Great Leader that Ukrainians and their internationals friends demand.
