Daniel Bilak: EuroMaidan wants real change, and here is the recipe

 Happy days for politicians seem to be a thing of the past in Ukraine. 

The people are not pleased. Despite returning the Constitution of 2004, repealing the controversial regional Russian language law, release of most of the detainees and previously imprisoned opponents of the Viktor Yanukovych regime, and bringing the president’s opulent residence, Mezhyhirya, back into state ownership, people want more – now.

Suspicious of backroom deals and the motives of deputies, it is clear that people desire a new relationship between the citizen and the state, one where their former public masters now become their public servants.

Accordingly, while still burying its dead, the Maidan is demanding a say in all major decisions affecting their lives and to have a real voice in how they are governed: members of the government must be professional, honest, untainted by business and corrupt schemes, should declare income and assets in a fully transparent manner, remain fully accountable to the people through regular detailed reporting, and, crucially, they want new, young faces in government. The Maidan has no intention of dispersing until it is confident that the country’s leaders are capable of governing in a transparent and accountable manner. One can understand the discomfort of the current crop of politicians.

Even Yulia Tymoshenko is feeling the heat. She received a respectful, but underwhelming welcome from the Maidan following her release from prison on Feb. 22 and is clearly more popular with world leaders than she seems to be with her own people. With signs on the Maidan like “Yulia Freedom, Not Power” and “Yulia, you’re free…to go”, she likely has an uphill struggle to establish her credibility with the electorate if she runs for president in elections scheduled for May 25.

All of this is taking place against the background of fragile political circumstances in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea and economic collapse. Euromaidan supporters are still battling bands of young provocateurs, the so-called “titushky”, in Kharkiv, Mykolayiv and parts of Crimea as the regional leadership is paralyzed by uncertainty. Russia is making provocative and ominous noises regarding “protecting the rights” of Russian-speakers in Ukraine.

On the other hand, there will be no civil war in Ukraine. To the surprise of many western observers, most of the east, south and even Crimea are relatively quiet. Significantly, the elected and appointed leaders in the regions, previously overwhelmingly loyal to the ousted president, have reaffirmed the territorial unity and indivisibility of Ukraine and have called for clam.

In nationalist Lviv, the citizens have decided to speak Russian for two days to show solidarity with their Russian-speaking brethren in the east. Even the mayor of Kharkiv, who had earlier uttered separatist declarations, has recognized the legitimacy of the new regime.

It is anticipated that a new government will be appointed by parliament tomorrow. As a matter of priority, before the announcement of a comprehensive reform plan, which will take a few weeks, the new leadership should adopt the following immediate 10 “quick win” measures to stabilize the situation in the country. These will reassure both its citizens and the world of the government’s and parliament’s competency and commitment to fighting corruption and restoring the legitimacy of the country’s shattered institutions through a new model of public accountability:

1) Immediately sign the Association Agreement with the EU; ratify the Rome Treaty implementing the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in Ukraine;

2) The Verkhovna Rada should immediately abolish the immunity of deputies; it is unclear why this has not yet happened and the longer this issue is unresolved, the more discredited the political system will become – a dangerous situation when the legitimacy of what is left of the country’s shredded institutions is at stake;

3) Send a signal of reassurance to Crimea by re-affirming that the government has no intention of interfering with the constitutional autonomy of the citizens of the peninsula and that it will continue to protect their rights; publicly remind Russia, the US and the European countries of their obligations to guarantee Ukraine’s territorial integrity under the treaty they signed when Ukraine relinquished its tactical nuclear weapons.

4) Organise the police and local authorities in eastern Ukraine to fight titushky and criminals to return peace to the cities; hold one of the first meetings of the new Cabinet of Ministers in Kharkiv or Simferopol in a “town-hall” format to address questions from citizens;

5) Immediately create an open informational space to allow objective information to reach eastern and southern regions; use the state television channel UT-1 to facilitate open debate and access to all sources of information;

6) Arrange (perhaps with the assistance of the country’s European and US partners) for trainloads of people from the eastern part of the country to visit the Maidan and Mezhyhirya so that they can see where the money for pensions, salaries, health care and education that ostensibly couldn’t be paid went and that those that died shared the same desire for fairness and justice – the Maidan needs to become an idea to promote national unity;

7) Negotiate an emergency line of credit with the EU and US to hold over the Ukrainian economy until a more stable programme can be agreed with the IMF; seek recovery of plundered funds by declaring all of the people from the previous regime under international investigation and request international banks to freeze their accounts; to being the process of de-monopolization of the economy, abolish the regime’s “tax reform” to rein in the tax police and let people get back to running their small and medium-sized businesses;

8) Liquidate the Oblast State Administrations and pass their functions and powers to local councils, especially the transparent formation of local budgets; people are impatiently waiting for the legalization of the local self-government processes that began over the last month; as part of the decentralization process, announce the intention to transfer responsibility for key public services (police, fire department, schools, clinics, etc.) to local authorities; twinning cities in the east/south with the central/west region will allow sharing of best practices in local self-governance already underway and help eliminate regional misconceptions as people from different parts of the country get to work together;

9) Declare an intention to implement a system of e-governance (follow Estonia’s example), allowing citizens to track decisions of public authorities, procurement tenders and contracts, judicial decisions, etc.; and finally

10) Request the EU, US and Canada, as well as other countries and international financial institutions (such as the World Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) to provide the government with an inventory of the most relevant technical assistance projects that they have funded over the years regarding institutional reforms, particularly in the following priority areas: legal, law enforcement and judicial reform; competitiveness and improvement in the investment climate; reform of local self-government and municipal finance reform; public administration reform; and the social sector (pensions, education, health care). Much of this is shovel-ready and there is no need to re-invent the wheel.

Effective so-called donor coordination here is crucial and, from my own experience, it could be the donors’ biggest present challenge. It is not enough to wait for the government to ask for particular advice, this time you have to be proactive.

The author is an international lawyer based in Kyiv and a former UNDP senior governance advisor to the Government of Ukraine.