KYIV – In an unexpected move, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appointed former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili as head of the Odesa Oblast State Administration to lead the president’s initiatives in the region, as well as oversee the spending of funds earmarked by the central Kyiv budget.
Though he was placed under arrest in his native Georgia, Mr. Saakashvili is among the most popular post-Soviet politicians in Ukraine and the West after leading reforms that turned Georgia into a competitive economy. He has a long history in Ukraine, having studied alongside Mr. Poroshenko in Kyiv and learned the Ukrainian language.
A key supporter of the maidans in Kyiv, Mr. Saakashvili spent recent months criticizing the Ukrainian government for failing to quickly carry out needed reforms. In appointing Mr. Saakashvili, Mr. Poroshenko is forcing him to either show what he can do or back down from the criticism, observers said.
“Saakashvili simply couldn’t be an outside observer of Ukraine’s reforms process, or just a top advisor at that. It’s not in his active nature,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, the director of the Penta Center for Applied Political Research in Kyiv. “His hyper-energetic nature requires applying himself to a concrete matter. He doesn’t even know how long he will have to wait until he returns to Georgia. Yet he can return from Ukraine with success at that, as he’s likely hoping.”
Mr. Saaskashvili will have his work cut out for him as Odesa is among the main sources of corruption in the Ukrainian economy, being the nation’s biggest port and having a reputation for contraband for decades, dating back to the Soviet era. Odesa is also the nation’s third-largest city, behind Kyiv and Kharkiv.
In presenting Mr. Saakashvili, the president referred to him as an “independent, decisive person” and assigned him the priorities of deoligarchization, fighting corruption, ensuring transparency in the state customs and tax-collecting services, and defending the rights of citizens.
In turn, Mr. Saakashvili said he’d make reducing contraband a priority and ensure a level playing field of doing business for all. His first concrete move was to announce open and transparent competitions for the chairs of 24 of 27 district state administrations.
“The situation with crime is very complicated,” he told the Channel 5 news network on the day of his appointment. “There’s a lot of weapons here, contraband and criminals coming from Transnistria. I have experience. In my time, we cut off contraband from Russia.”
However, it’s his very post as oblast state administration head that has made political players question the extent of his ability to achieve success. The position is largely limited to overseeing the spending of funds allocated from the central state budget, with no law enforcement authority.
“Decentralization hasn’t begun and not one local subunit of law enforcement – or any other executive body – is subordinate to the head of the oblast administration,” said Andrii Portnov, a key official in the administration of former President Viktor Yanukovych, as reported by the vesti-ukr.com news site on June 2.
Yet the president has already begun to find ways to enhance Mr. Saakashvili’s authority on an informal basis, said Petro Oleshchuk, a political science lecturer at Shevchenko National University in Kyiv.
The president is reported by local media to be planning to appoint a new oblast prosecutor and a police chief to Mr. Saakashvili’s liking, which would enable him to better fulfill his goals. These officials were identified by the news.pn news site as former Georgian Prosecutor General Zurab Adeishvili and Internal Affairs Deputy Minister Oleksii Rudenko.
“If Saakashvili sees he will lack success working with his authority, then I don’t see him working in that position,” Mr. Oleshchuk said. “He will have to challenge corruption and criminal clans. If he doesn’t, his tenure won’t be well-regarded.”
Yet a successful administration could lead to Mr. Saakashvili becoming prime minister, numerous political observers said. Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko could become his first vice prime minister, Mr. Fesenko said, adding that “so far those are merely political science fantasies.”
Both politicians were granted Ukrainian citizenship by Mr. Poroshenko in order to serve in the government. But Mr. Saakashvili’s decision to drop his Georgian citizenship was criticized by the current Georgian president, who accused him of insulting the Georgian nation and the office of the Georgian presidency.
Yet the president saw more in Mr. Saakashvili than a potential candidate to replace Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who experts widely doubt will survive in his post by the year’s end.
The person being replaced by Mr. Saakashvili, Ihor Palytsia, is a long-time political ally to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, Mr. Poroshenko’s biggest enemy within Ukraine’s borders at the moment.
Indeed, the two billionaires are locked in a fierce political battle, observers said. Appointing Mr. Saakashvili in Odesa gives the president a counter-balance to Mr. Kolomoisky, who controls his native Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city.
“Poroshenko is trying to take the Odesa Oblast from Kolomoisky,” said political consultant Andrii Zolotariov in a June 2 blog for the nv.ua news site. “Besides that, he is trying to create a launching pad for appointing Saakashvili to a higher post, namely in the Cabinet.”
Mr. Kolomoisky’s displeasure was apparent afterwards, when he called Mr. Saakashvili a “temporary figure” who will “surrender Odesa to the Russians,” as reported by the lb.ua news site.
But Mr. Saakashvili is acting as though he has a long way to go, already declaring his plan to cut enough excess state administration employees to save $200,000 annually in salaries and clean up customs corruption from the oblast’s three major ports.
“If Saakashvili starts to ruffle feathers, Odesa can turn from a relatively calm region into a source of tension,” Mr. Zolotariov wrote. “That’s the very risk, the possible failure of which the president will hardly take upon himself.”