The Next Chapter for Ukraine

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/opinion/the-next-chapter-for-ukraine.html

Version 0 of 1.

After several days of raucous horse-trading behind closed doors, the Ukrainian Parliament on Thursday picked Volodymyr Groysman, the speaker and a close ally of President Petro Poroshenko, as the new prime minister after the resignation of Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The choice was not a surprise — the bickering had been over cabinet appointments — and no great leap forward.

The exit of Mr. Yatsenyuk, once the darling of Ukraine’s Western supporters, should put an end to the infighting in Parliament between his supporters and Mr. Poroshenko’s that had all but paralyzed the government. The squabbling and inaction have delayed disbursement of $1.7 billion in badly needed International Monetary Fund loans, part of a $17.5 billion bailout program that is contingent on progress in economic reforms and combating corruption.

Mr. Groysman echoed the concerns of Ukraine’s Western supporters on Thursday when he called “corruption, ineffective governance and populism” no less of a threat to Ukraine than “the enemy in eastern Ukraine,” meaning the separatists whose Russia-backed rebellion has played a major role in destabilizing Ukraine’s economy and politics.

It can only be hoped that Mr. Groysman means what he says and with Mr. Poroshenko’s support will begin a serious offensive against the cozy links between rulers and oligarchs and the culture of corruption.

That is a lot to hope for. Mr. Groysman is Mr. Poroshenko’s man, dependent on a parliamentary coalition between the forces of the president and of Mr. Yatsenyuk that was weakly held together by their desire to avoid national elections. Mr. Poroshenko prefers to rule through loyalists and secretive deals; he has also been tarnished by revelations in the so-called Panama Papers that he opened an offshore account in 2014. Many of the ministers in the new government are holdovers, and the prosecutor general’s office — key to any fight against corruption — is expected to go to another Poroshenko ally.

That does not mean there is no hope. Mr. Yatsenyuk does leave behind some worthy legislative achievements. And the Ukrainians who demonstrated for integration with Western Europe and against corruption remain an active force through civic organizations. One of their leaders is Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, who was brought in by Mr. Poroshenko as governor of Odessa and is emerging as an independent anti-corruption campaigner.

And so begins a new chapter in Ukraine’s troubled post-Soviet history. Mr. Groysman knows what needs to be done, and Mr. Poroshenko can no longer blame a rival in the prime minister’s office for failure. They know that Western support and aid hang in the balance. The best option before them is to do what the government should have been doing from the start.