Fight against corruption, reform of justice, rule of law: Ukrainian officials endeavor to anticipate the end of the conflict and the reconstruction of the country.
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At the kyiv Opera, we play Rigoletto, de Verdi. Life has resumed its rights in the Ukrainian capital and, if it was not the unusual number of lattice pedestrians, concrete blocks and frieze horses placed in certain strategic places, one could almost ignore that the war, brutal and brutal and Murder, rages on the eastern and southern fronts, a few hundred kilometers.
However, another offensive, even less visible, is underway in kyiv. It is deployed on a theater familiar to the heirs of post-Soviet space: that of the rule of law and the fight against corruption. The shock of the Russian aggression of February 24 and then the positive dynamic of the perspective of the membership of Ukraine to the European Union, opened in June, gave new impetus to the militants of democracy. Under this double catalyst effect, they multiply the efforts to try to catch up with the time lost in these three decades muddled from the independence of Ukraine.
Can democracy progress in wartime? It is at first glance counter-intuitive, but Ukraine may well surprise on this ground too. Sergiy Solodkyy, from the local Think Tank New Europe Center, sums up three waves of disappointed hopes: “After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the democratic transformation was captured by the nomenklatura and the post-Soviet mafia. 2004, the “orange revolution” failed to put down the power of the oligarchs and President Viktor IouchChenko was incorporated into the system. “In 2014, with the Maidan revolution, Sergiy Solodkyy really believed that this time, everything was going to change, “but Vladimir Putin also understood this”. Today, he says, “February 24 has opened a fourth wave of hope-perhaps the last”.
“plus the right to fail”
Because now, we often hear in kyiv, “we no longer have the right to fail”. The tribute already paid into human lives is too heavy. “The people who fight at the front ask us: do you advance? Because we, when we come back, we want to see results,” reports Roman Maselko, a lawyer very committed to the fight against corruption that comes from Be appointed by the Parliament Member of the Superior Council of Justice, a Ukrainian equivalent of the Superior Council of Magistracy in France. This body is crucial for the reform of the judicial system because it calls judges, essential link – and so far weak link – to clean corruption. “We are fighting to recover our territory but also to change the system, continues Roman Maselko. We do not want to be like Russia, we want to be Europe.” War, he said, accelerated this effort: “A year ago, I would never have hoped to be appointed to this position.”
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