On May 20, Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a press conference dedicated to the 2nd anniversary of his presidency. The president announced the end of three epochs — the Medvedchuk epoch, the epoch of corruption and the epoch of poverty. The president failed to mention which epoch begins.
There are such things as expectations and reality. Unfortunately, during press conference, we did not hear what we wanted to hear from the president for a very long time.
Thus, at the beginning of the meeting with journalists, Zelenskyy defined “a country without oligarchs” as No. 1 priority. The president plans to implement this through the draft law on deoligarchization. At the same time, he emphasizes that in no case does he want to destroy big business, but wants to undermine the influence of big business on the media, politics, and officials.
We live in an interesting time — the president stressed that the epoch of Medvedchuk, the epoch of corruption and the epoch of poverty are coming to an end. But if we see real steps neutralizing Putin’s fellow, it is still a little difficult for us to agree with the end of the corruption epoch. And this is not only our opinion — this is also evidenced by the indicators of Ukraine in the latest Corruption Perceptions Index.
Anti-corruption infrastructure.
The president considers the HACC and the NABU crucial institutions and does everything possible to ensure that they are not influenced. Apparently, he fails to do everything possible, or simply turns a blind eye on such influences.
Zelenskyy wants to see the HACC’s sentences, clear and rough. It is strange to hear this because the Anti-Corruption Court passes many sentences in cases. There could have been many more of them, as well as of important investigations, if the authorities and, for example, Prosecutor General Venediktova, had not interfered in the activity of anti-corruption bodies.
The president said that he would not like to see “the court release people for 3 kopiikas.” What does he mean by these 3 kopiikas? In just 2 years of its work, more than UAH 65 mln was channeled to the state budget on bails.
Why is Tatarov valuable?
Unfortunately, no clear answer was given. “I believe that Tatarov is a professional. However, I do not know what he said or where he said it,” the president stressed. Again, it turns out that the arguments of NABU detectives and SAPO prosecutors are not so important for the president.
By the way, the president did not answer either the question about Tatarov’s very specific negative statement on the Maidan, which was cited by a media representative.
SBU.
According to the president, the reform of law enforcement agencies will take place very soon. And, finally, the SBU will lose its powers to investigate economic crimes (and will hopefully stop harassing businesses). But the president did not say why the SBU continues to investigate anti-corruption crimes and whether it will continue and for how long.
Unfortunately, Ukrainians were not given answers to these and other important questions. We have not heard what will happen next with the scandalous KAC, when the judicial reform will be implemented, whether draft laws on anti-corruption infrastructure will be submitted etc. Perhaps the president failed to wait for the very questions as well as the journalists, who also failed to wait for the opportunity to ask them.
And we still hope to hear these much-desired answers from the head of state. After all, Zelenskyy stated that he wants to become the best president in the country’s history. And how is this possible when one evades the main topic?
