Where's Ukraine Headed? Watch Who Gets the Prosecutor's Job
The search for a new prime minister dominated headlines in Ukraine for weeks. But another personnel change is probably a more important indicator of where the country, Europe’s worst-ranked in global corruption indexes, is headed.
President Petro Poroshenko, who’s seen protege Volodymyr Hroisman take over as premier, must pick his third top prosecutor in two years after ditching ally Viktor Shokin for failing to deliver high-level corruption convictions. Reviled by voters and criticized by foreign donors, Shokin became an emblem of stalled reforms in the wake of demonstrations that ousted Ukraine’s Kremlin-backed leader in 2014.
The protesters’ demands for European levels of transparency in a nation plagued by graft for decades haven’t been met.
The former Soviet republic’s corruption ranking has barely moved, reformers have left alleging graft among ruling-party officials and Poroshenko himself featured in the so-called Panama Papers. While the new government can restart Ukraine’s $17.5 billion bailout, the power the chief prosecutor wields makes that position the best signal of how serious politicians are on corruption. The appointment will also determine the longer-term flow of financial aid from countries including the U.S.
“It doesn’t matter who’s prime minister,” said Yehor Sobolev, a member of the Samopomich party that quit the ruling coalition and campaigned to have Shokin fired. “He won’t be able to do anything without a strong, independent prosecutor general.”
While Ukraine’s leaders have stabilized the budget and overcome a recession, their record on tackling graft is less impressive. The country ranks 130th in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, almost exactly where it was in 2010. No one’s been convicted over the billions of dollars Ukraine’s post-revolution leaders say the old regime stole. The same applies to the 2014 killing of more than 100 demonstrators.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-21/where-s-ukraine-headed-watch-who-gets-the-top-prosecutor-s-job
