“Slightly deviated”: when will Arseniy Yatsenyuk resign?

Ukrainian experts are unanimous: we will hardly see him resigned. Only if his U.S. bosses also get tired of him.

An example for prime minister

The Ukrainians are indignant: if Arseniy Yatsenyuk is not going to keep his promise “to blow his brains,” he might, at least, follow the example of his Romanian colleague! As you may know, last week Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta resigned after an action of protest in Bucharest. The Romanians said he was personally responsible for the 32 deaths caused by a fire in Bucharest’s Colectiv nightclub. Well, Ponta was honest enough to stop ruling a country that no longer trusted him.

This seems to be the only way for Yatsenyuk, who is responsible for thousands of war deaths and a huge ruined country. But Yatsenyuk is not the one who will agree to leave a place that may give him some more dividends.

Some six months ago, when asked by an MP when he was going to resign, Yatsenyuk said: “Dear Mr. Deputy! Take a pen and a paper and take note: you will never lead me astray. We will change the country, we will carry out the reforms, we will do all we promised 15 months ago. 15 months ago I took responsibility for my country and I will bear it with dignity.”

The MP hardly needed a pen and a paper to remember that. Like most of the Ukrainians, he understood that the premier was very light-fingered. Gossip has it that he has already grabbed as much as one billion USD and has even celebrated this at a private party.

On Nov 6, Yatsenyuk warned that Ukraine would soon lose $2bn more. And who will find that money? So, we can expect some more parties, can’t we?

Do us a favor, go away!

Parties are not the only thing Yatsenyuk is doing. Recently, he announced staff reshuffles in his Cabinet, with Energy and Coal Industry Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn, Education Minister Serhiy Kvit and Health Care Minister Alexander Kvitashvili having the highest chances to be fired.

Following this announcement, liga.net asked its readers whom they would like to see fired from the Cabinet. And it turned out that 15% of the Ukrainians would like to see Yatsenyuk fired!

Culture Minister Vyacheslav Kyrylenko polled 8% of the votes. Information Policy Minister Yuriy Stets is the third on the list.

“Senya (Arseniy), do us a favor, go away!,” “The Rabbit (Yatsenyuk’s nickname) is the first to be fired!,” “When will he get his fairing!?” – these are the most decent comments you can find on the net.

The Ukrainians are doing their best to get rid of Yatsenyuk. Since August, when the president’s web site was opened for petitions, they have kept petitioning to fire Yatsenyuk, to put him in jail or, at least, to send him as an ambassador to some far-away place, like Honduras.

In order to be accepted, a petition should have at least 25,000 signatories. One of the last ones suggested appointing as Ukraine’s Prime Minister the Dark Lord Darth Vader, and President Poroshenko was forced to answer it. He said that, according to Ukraine’s laws, prime minister should be nominated by the president at the suggestion of the parliamentary majority. In other words, even dark forces are not able to harm Yatsenyuk.

Six of one and half a dozen of the other

You may laugh at it, but the question “When will Ukraine be able to say goodbye to its premier?” remains open.

Deputy Director of Public Audit LLC Andrey Vigirinsky, Yatsenyuk is not the one who will resign on his own will.

“The rating of his party is so low that it was not even able to run in the last local elections! Any reasonable leader in a democratic society would have long resigned. But this requires moral courage - something Yatsenyuk does not have. What he has is ambition, egoism and disrespect for own people. So, we can hardly see him resigning on his own. The best we can see is a vote of no confidence in the Cabinet and a show picturing Yatsenyuk giving a bouquet to his successor,” says Vigirinsky.

According to economist Vsevolod Stepanyuk, Yatsenyuk has no authority to decide when he can resign. “He will resign only when his U.S. bosses tell him to. I don’t think this will happen earlier than next February. The question is who will come in his place. Yaresko and Saakashvili are both Washington’s protégés. Poroshenko and the Supreme Rada will resist, but the Americans will seat one of the two,” Stepanyuk says.

So, the Ukrainians will still have to bear their premier for some time. 

As far as the Americans are concerned, they are quite satisfied with him. Simply, they can’t say it openly. “You just can’t convince a person that his country is moving in the right way when formerly he was able to spend his holidays in Spain and now he has no money even for a home trip,” says political scientist and economist Alexander Dudchak.

“Obviously, Ukraine’s economy is facing hard times and those responsible for this must give us some explanations. And they do. They say: Yatsenyuk is an excellent economist, but there were things he just couldn’t manage. He did his best but he had very little time. On the other hand, only a real talent could ruin a whole country in so little time!” Dudchak says.

“But the problem is that in Yatsenyuk’s place we may see an even more ‘talented’ premier – for example, the one who has managed to reschedule Ukraine’s debts. And for the next 1.5 years that man will pour banana oil in our ears and say that Yatsenyuk deviated a bit but we will go back and start again – no, not from the very beginning... from the midway. And we will believe him. If they fire prime ministers for being inefficient, it means they are doing something. And the next Premier will continue telling tales and ruining the country.”

Ruslan Vesnyanko (Kiev, Ukraine), specially for EADaily