February 28, 2015

Samopomich causing a stir in Ukraine’s Parliament

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Vladyslav Musiyenko/UNIAN

National Deputy Yegor Sobolyev and the Samopomich party became recognized as leading fighters against corruption after his February 12 fistfight in the Verkhovna Rada’s halls with National Deputy Vadym Ivchenko of Batkivshchyna, who is sponsoring a bill expanding the authority of local councils to privatize land.

KYIV – Fistfights aren’t anything unique for Ukraine’s Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, but National Deputy Yegor Sobolyev of the Samopomich party and Vadym Ivchenko of the Batkivshchyna party put on a special show in its halls on February 12.

Their bloody exchange of fists – dramatic enough to make them possible candidates for the professional ranks – lifted Mr. Sobolyev to celebrity status as a leader in the fight against corruption, rendering moot his party’s apology for his violent conduct afterwards.

It’s such passion and willingness to fight, literally in Mr. Sobolyev’s case, that 1.7 million voters were hoping for when casting their ballots for Samopomich in the October 2014 elections – 11 percent of the total – giving it the third-largest result (and fourth-largest parliamentary faction when including single-mandate districts).

“Sobolyev became a hero for me that day. He was fighting for me and all of us who have been fighting for years, pro bono, for the interests of citizens,” said Iryna Fedoriv, a Kyiv Oblast activist against illegal construction and a member of the Kotsiubynske Village Council.

“Without what happened in the halls, journalists would have hardly paid attention to bill No. 1159 and those lobbying for it. We have given him the voters’ power of attorney that is mandatory to fulfill: to not pass this or similar bills, but to reform the country in the interests of its people.”

The bill to which Ms. Fedoriv referred would have given local deputies in village and city councils the authority to change the zoning of land plots situated beyond their designated limits and privatize them.

The parliamentary Anti-Corruption Committee, led by Mr. Sobolyev, determined the legislation to be “corruption-genic” and rejected it. Local councils need greater authority, Mr. Sobolyev has argued, but not until land cadasters (registers) are launched throughout the country to monitor the trade of real estate.

“After the decision of our committee that this idea was corruption-genic, paid-for news items began to hound us, alleging we sold out to the State Land Resources Committee and won’t allow ‘good deputies’ to distribute ‘good land’ to ‘good people,’”  Mr. Sobolyev told reporters through a swollen bottom lip.

“Today, Ivchenko had the gall to come and try to convince Samopomich to vote for this ‘deryban,’” he said, using the Ukrainian term for a corrupt, reckless distribution of property. “That’s how the battle against corruption occurred in the literal sense of the word.”

Of the six parliamentary factions, the pro-Western Samopomich has been the most willing to buck the establishment since the eighth convocation of the Verkhovna Rada convened in late November, despite the fact that it is part of the parliamentary majority that consists of five pro-Western factions.

Only 10 of its 32 deputies supported the controversial December 29, 2014, vote approving the 2015 budget.

When it came time to approve Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s nomination of Viktor Shokin as the new procurator general, only one Samopomich deputy, Iryna Suslova, voted in favor, earning her an eviction from the faction.

Afterwards, faction head Oleh Bereziuk and Mr. Sobolyev became the most vocal critics of Mr. Shokin, who had served as a deputy procurator general in the main Kyiv office since 2004, making him a first-hand witness to corruption in the highest ranks of government.

Mr. Bereziuk referred to the vote as “a mockery of Ukrainian democracy,” pointing out that the Putin-aligned Opposition Bloc offered all its votes in favor. Mr. Sobolyev dubbed it “a shame and a big mistake.”

“A disciple of the system won’t change the system, all the more one so sold out and decayed as the procurator general of Ukraine,” Mr. Sobolyev stated. “We should bring a person who hates corruption to this post with an open competition.”

With a vote for the amended 2015 budget on the agenda for March 3, Samopomich’s leaders have already warned they won’t vote in favor if certain conditions aren’t met. In particular, they complained about not receiving details of how prices will be set for natural gas and heat, nor have they gotten calculations regarding the main expenses tied to gas prices.

The amended 2015 budget also contains incomplete estimates, such as 4 billion hrv ($133 million U.S.) in revenue missing from the sale of 3G licenses, and doesn’t take into account debt owed to the state, such as for consumed energy owed by oligarchs, estimated by Samopomich at 2 billion hrv ($67 million).

Despite all the active criticism, Samopomich’s political posture belies the fact that the party helped to form the coalition government in late November 2014, said Kyiv political consultant Mykhailo Basarab. After all, the party actively participated in the divvying up of positions in the coalition-formation process, he said.

Besides gaining the chairmanships of several key committees, such as the Anti-Corruption Committee headed by the 37-year-old Mr. Sobolyev and the Foreign Affairs Committee led by 32-year-old Hanna Hopko, Samopomich also gained the post of vice-chair of Parliament, filled by Oksana Syroyid, he pointed out. In this way, it’s trying to sit on two chairs at once, he said citing the Ukrainian adage.

“Its counter-positioning in its voting – contrasting with its coalition partners – is a desire to minimize its responsibility for the negative deeds of today’s government,” Mr. Basarab said. “They are making a certain wager for the future: we formed the coalition, but in some cases we took a principled position that differed. So we can’t carry the responsibility for the government’s miscalculations, as compared with the other coalition partners. It’s political craftiness.”

Such a position appeals to those pro-Western Ukrainians who are frustrated with the lack of reforms being pursued by the president and the prime minister, whose respective parties are taking the hit in poll ratings.

About 68 percent of Petro Poroshenko Bloc voters don’t regret their choice, as compared to 82 percent who don’t regret their vote for Samopomich, according to a poll released on February 3 that was conducted in late December of 2,008 respondents by the Razumkov Center and Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Fund in Kyiv.

So far, the political project is a success for Lviv City Council Head (Mayor) Andriy Sadovyi, who was its main financial sponsor and figurehead during the election campaign.

So, regardless of Mr. Sobolyev’s antics and the party’s rebellious voting behavior, it’s Mr. Sadovyi’s central role in the party that has made many skeptical of its commitment to reforms.

Ironically, the skepticism is greatest among the very residents of Lviv, where Mr. Sadovyi is widely viewed as just another corrupt politician, according to civic leaders that The Weekly interviewed.

“Sadovyi’s main accomplishment was that he was able to impose a stereotype that he represents a new cohort of figures, which is a deliberate deception of the voter,” said Ostap Drozdov, a Lviv political talk show host.

He merely distinguished himself in magnitude, amassing a multi-million-dollar personal fortune through opaque land sales and business contracts, which reached their peak leading up to the Euro 2012 soccer tournament, said Teodor Diakiv, a local activist and former city council deputy.

“Sadovyi the businessman emerged from the construction schemes in preparation for the Euro 2012,” he said, citing the biggest affair, which involved denying a German investor the opportunity to build the stadium in favor of government funds that were promptly diverted into private accounts.

“Behind the Samopomich façade is corruption. Sadovyi is a highly professional, corrupt politician who knows how to cover his tracks,” Mr. Diakiv said.

Mr. Sadovyi has rejected the accusations of corruption.

With his arsenal of millions, Mr. Sadovyi began to piece together the Samopomich party in 2012 after the Pora political party – as a member of which he was elected as City Council head in 2006 – disintegrated.

Those who helped form the party borrowed the Samopomich name from the network of credit unions that had sprung up in the Halychyna region in the early 20th century and thrived until the Soviet occupation, providing financial services for Ukrainians who faced economic discrimination under Polish rule.

Then, as party leader, Mr. Sadovyi tapped Mr. Bereziuk, who was his personal psychologist, Mr. Drozdov said. He also serves as an assistant in the department of psychiatry and psychotherapy in the Halytskyi National Medical University in Lviv.

“Bereziuk is practically Sadovyi’s second head,” Mr. Drozdov said. “It’s rare that a psychoanalyst becomes the right-hand man of a politician. He knows how to conceal the mayor’s weaknesses and works expertly with public opinion. All the constructions around Sadovyi that create a positive image are Bereziuk’s achievement. It’s very professionally done.”

When the pre-term parliamentary elections were unexpectedly announced following the Euro-Maidan, Messrs. Sadovyi and Bereziuk had to recruit a political team – particularly for the closed electoral lists to present to voters – that would draw the interest of voters.

Besides their own entourage, Messrs. Sadovyi and Bereziuk drew on several key sources, according to the Liustratsiya program on the ZIK television network.

They consisted of three soldiers from the volunteer Donbas Battalion that fought in the early months of the Donbas war (led by Battalion Commander Semen Semenchenko), the leaders to the Resuscitation Reforms Package (led by Ms. Hopko), members of the Volia party (led by Mr. Sobolyev) and entrepreneurs (particularly from the information technology sphere).

With its strong contingent of civic activists with roots in Western-sponsored NGOs (including Ms. Hopko, who ranked first on the electoral list), Samopomich’s popularity was highest in the capital city of Kyiv, where it gained 21 percent of the vote and even exceeded the party’s 19 percent result in the Lviv Oblast.

“All new people competed, which filled a demand,” Sergei Gayday, the campaign manager for the People’s Front party, said of Samopomich following the elections. “That’s what most attracted voters, not advertisements or messages. Their campaign could have been strengthened even further, yet that was enough for many people to vote for them.”

The strong Kyiv result prompted Lviv political experts to comment that Mr. Sadovyi had the Yushchenko syndrome of being more popular away from his homeland.

“Kyiv, and Ukraine as a whole, perceive Sadovyi through the television screen and programs like Savik Shuster and Sadovyi’s own 24 television channel,” Mr. Diakiv said.

They insist that the progress Lviv has made this decade – with 24-hour running water, clean streets and a downtown bustling with shops and business – was achieved in spite of Mr. Sadovyi, who merely has taken advantage of his city’s improved image.

Incidentally, Mr. Sadovyi himself didn’t qualify for Parliament, having placed himself 50th on the closed electoral list. There’s a reason for that, Mr. Drozdov said.

So while Mr. Sadovyi remains in the background for now, dispelling speculation that he’s aiming to compete for the Ukrainian presidency some day, the spotlight has been directed towards party leaders such as Messrs. Sobolyev and Semenchenko.

The latter made headlines when declaring after the Ukrainian February 18 retreat from Debaltseve that he was organizing an alternative Joint Chiefs of Staff because of his belief that military commanders weren’t giving the president accurate information.

Meanwhile, Mr. Sobolyev focused his battles on the legislative front in the Parliament building.

“That fight could have been perceived as a demonstration of decisiveness and a principled stand in a significant part of society,” said Mr. Basarab, the Kyiv political consultant. “Sobolyev could be seen as a person who’s even capable of defending the common good with his fists. In these extraordinary times of extreme emotional duress, society might welcome such principled aggressiveness.”

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