Saakashvili-Avakov conflict: the true causes

It seems like neither the war in the east, nor the loss of territory, nor economic difficulties, nor even the visit of the US Vice President Joe Biden could stop the intraspecific competition in Ukraine’s politics. The conflict that flared up at the session of the Reform Council on Monday night sent ripples through the public. Everyone felt it their duty to analyze what had happened and take a side. It is certainly important for the current situation and the understanding of which way the country is heading with such politicians. And yet the problem is much deeper. It has a systemic character.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?

Each of the involved parties presented its own version of the story.

Immediately after the closing of the meeting, Avakov wrote on his Facebook page: “Just now, at the session of the Reform Council, Mr. Saakashvili flew off the handle when I asked him why he had discussed the Odesa Port Plant with a Russian oligarch from Uralkhim, and whether this had anything to do with the process of privatization of the OPP. The Odesa governor lost it and started yelling at me: ‘No one has the right to speak to Mikheil Saakashvili like that, you are a corrupt minister while I am an honest man,’ and went over to insults. I held back the urge to hit him, and splashed some water in his face. I haven’t seen such a schizophrenic populist in a long while… He wouldn’t let anyone say anything and interrupted everyone, including the president. Saakashvili is a windbag speculating on difficulties, he does not answer for anything… I’m fed up with clowns. Time to work, not to prattle!”

After the incident, Saakashvili immediately gave a press conference at the Presidential Administration, where he said: “From the first minute of his speech, Avakov began to say that I was not speaking emotionally, unlike in a TV show. He insulted me and raised the question of Uralkhim. I do not know this oligarch, I do not know what Uralkhim is, and I have never met this oligarch [although later the Ministry of Interior published a video of Saakashvili meeting with the Russian oligarch Dmitry Mazepin.    – Author]. Then Avakov resorted to profane language and insults. During this wrangle Avakov threw a glass, it flew past some of the people and missed me, only the water splashed the clothes. I didn’t insult anyone, did not return the scolding words, I only said that Avakov and Yatseniuk are thieves and that Avakov belongs in prison. I tend to associate this reaction on the part of the prime minister’s team with the investigation into the OPP, which is currently under way. It is an extensive corruption scheme, involving the interests of the People’s Front MPs Serhii Pashynsky, his business partner Serhii Tyshchenko, and also MP Mykola Martynenko.”

“At that point Prime Minister Yatseniuk intervened, calling Saakashvili a ‘guest performer’ and telling him to ‘get out of Ukraine.’ To this Saakashvili retorted that he is ‘as much a citizen of Ukraine as they are, but, unlike Yatseniuk, did not rob Ukraine.’ All of this happened in the present of President Poroshenko, who tried to calm down both parties, and then closed the meeting,” wrote MP Serhii Leshchenko.

After the brawl both Avakov and Saakashvili demanded that the Presidential Administration’s press service publish the video recording of the meeting. “I see that Arsen Avakov and Mikheil Saakashvili cannot wait to show the video of the meeting of the National Reform Council. But such back alley brawls are a disgrace to the country,” answered Sviatoslav Tseholko, press secretary to the president.

WHAT SHOULD THE REASONS BE?

No matter what lofty words the parties to the conflict used, invoking combating corruption and fighting for justice, the confrontation obviously has a corporate-financial nature.

“Saakashvili is an unstoppable populist, who has built his entire career on fiction rather than fact,” says public activist Hennadii Druzenko in his comment to The Day. “Corruption in Georgia was crushed on the bottom and middle level, but monopolized on the top. This system could be created with the president’s effectively dictatorial powers. Yatseniuk, on the other hand, embodies the old system, which loves money and silence. That the conflict is orchestrated by President Poroshenko is also clear as day. In any civilized country, when a high positioned official directly and openly accuses the prime minister, one of them has to go. You cannot represent the executive branch and yet be in opposition to its head. So, the seed of conflict between Yatseniuk and Saakashvili is planted, and the president is using the latter as a gun to shoot at the government.

Sketch by Anatolii KAZANSKY from The Day’s archives, 1997

“Accepting his office from the president’s hands, Saakashvili forfeited the opportunity to become a true fighter against corruption and became instead the fighter against corruption in the Cabinet,” continues Druzenko. “Invoking Martynenko’s name, which has become a sort of byword, he suffers strange amnesia when it comes, say, to Kononenko’s. Which changes this ‘war on corruption’ into something different: a struggle for redistribution of power and resources among various groups. However, this has nothing to do with reforms and state-building. It is rather an online political show, which can only cause destruction. I can hardly recall any efficient ‘guest star’ in Ukraine. I am very skeptical towards foreigners in government, with the only exception of the function of advisers. Instead of professionalism, we have imported subservience to others’ interests and scandal. We have imported the Georgian prevalence of marketing over essence. As a result, as I travel across the country, I observe a collapse of the law-enforcement system, when the law-enforcement agencies do not even register thefts.”

Not to mention the problem of speedy issuance of Ukrainian passports to foreign nationals, mostly Georgians, which turned them overnight into “Ukrainians.” We wrote from the very start that such disregard of the institute of nationality erodes the very institute of state.

“If politicians place national interests first, there will be no problems, including such behavior,” said Anatolii Matviienko, deputy head of the BPP faction, in a comment to The Day. “Yet if ambitions and personal interests get involved, then conflicts arise. Saakashvili is part of government, and if he disposes of established facts of violations he claims to have taken place, this matter has to be solved at the level of the president and prime minister. These facts should be shared with relevant authorities (especially now that Ukraine has got its National Anti-Corruption Bureau) and investigated, and then published. If the investigation confirms them, then it is time to demand resignation. However, now an absolutely different logic is in use: first statements are published, but no one cares to check the authenticity of the facts. The same applies to minister Avakov. Truth be said, he at least made no public statements prior to the Monday meeting. All in all, it seems to me that we are talking about general culture standards, which the president and prime minister must demonstrate by personal example, and demand the same from their subordinates. There are unwritten laws. If you want to wage a war, leave the institute, which you represent, and make war. But if you are part of this institute, behave according to corporate ethic rules. So, both parties to this conflict should be punished.”

WHERE IS THE WAY OUT?

We could endlessly discuss the present tug-of-war in government and their consequences if we do not look into the source. We should look for it at the Kyiv Court of Appeal, which is considering the Gongadze-Podolsky case. Here is an update on the recent developments at the court. On December 15, a panel of judges led by Stepan Hladii refused to satisfy the petition of the complainant Oleksii Podolsky’s proxies, Viktor Shyshkin and Oleksandr Yeliashkevych, to challenge the judges. Podolsky’s team cited numerous and systematic violations of law,       court procedure, and the complainant’s rights.

“Under the circumstances when, due to the panel’s actions, I and my proxies are unlawfully deprived of the right and possibility to take part in the consideration of the complainant’s appeal in essence, and when they are even banned from the courtroom (since the panel never canceled its illegal rulings to remove them from the courtroom, but never published them in the Unified Register of Court Decisions, either), I refuse to recognize this shameful show, this is not a process regulated by the 1960 Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine. As of December 15, in sign of protest and categorical disagreement with the consequences of the Kuchma-Yanukovych (and now also Poroshenko) system’s policies, we withdraw from the process,” wrote Podolsky to The Day.

Pity, because this is also the fault of all others – journalists, public activists, and politicians – who did not make enough effort to dot the i’s and cross the t’s in this case. Some might say, “everyone is sick and tired of it, what is the use of bringing it up over and over again.” Yet in this case you are doomed to only one choice: deciding who is right and who is wrong. In this case, Saakashvili (Poroshenko) or Avakov (Yatseniuk). To start with, one must realize that the former Georgian president’s handshake with Kuchma at the recent YES conference, Ukraine’s incumbent president’s vows of allegiance to that very same Kuchma, recorded on the “Melnychenko tapes,” or Yatseniuk’s long-time close cooperation with the Pinchuk Foundation were all the beginnings of big political careers in Ukraine. And what is happening at the Court of Appeal today is only a confirmation that the pupils will not let down their teacher. Their current conflicts are nothing but playground squabbles.

“This is the problem of kleptocracy, the rule of thieves. It is unbearable, but it underlies the criminal nature of the regime which stems from Russia, but is purposefully implemented in its degenerated form in Ukraine as part of its common, for its spheres of influence and interests, criminal archipelago (the criminal underworld, essentially antagonistic to the civilized world),” writes lawyer Kostiantyn Soloviov on Facebook. “This might look like a domestic problem, but it has a great foreign importance, as a condition for [national] security. And if there is a question ‘What should be done, and how?’ then it is important to stick to non-bureaucratic principles of formalism and hierarchy of knowledge for organizing the struggle against kleptocracy as an important part of a political regime.”