Saakashvili: I have evidence of cabinet’s complicity in corruption

“Ukraine needs redical changes in the wake of the 2014 revolution. Either the government makes them or the people of Ukraine will take care of this. There is no third option, no matter how those who have shared the spheres of influence hope,” Odesa Governor and ex-President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili said in Kyiv in the course of the international conference on Ukraine government track record in fighting corruption over the past 2 years Nov. 18.

Its participants, Forbes observes, preferred to focus on global issues to be resolved in Ukraine, leaving aside the government’s two-year record. Not Mikheil Saakashvili. He used scathing remarks describing the ‘successes’ of Ukraine reformers. 

Forbes gives the main outlines of Saakashvili’s address:

New staff is needed. One cannot add fresh cucumbers to a barrel of salted ones, expecting them all to become fresh.

We have very good ministers, but we do not have the government. There is a government but it is totally corrupt.

If there was the government that does not steal, and premier’s buddies did not become billionaires in the first year of Premier’s tenure, everything would be easy: the premier would say “I do not steal and will not let you steal” – it is as simple as that.

Given the totally corrupt court system, the government can do little to introduce reforms without a viable prosecution.

Odesa authorities are implementing a project to build a hub airport. However, Tycoon Ihor Kolomojsky has control over Kyiv’s Boryspil airport, and he doesn’t want a hub airport in Odesa, a bigger one than Boryspil.

The prosecutors are pressing for the closure of construction. To close the only big project going on in Odesa!

The Kyiv apparat tries to block our attempts to cleanse the Odesa customs by re-routing customs operations from Odesa to Kyiv! It’s a disgrace.

Then Kyiv starts to say that Odesa customs revenues have become lower, putting the blame on us. 

It would be wrong to assume that the steam has been let off in the last local elections. But Ukrainians are angered as they see that nothing has changed, Mikheil Saakashvili said.