Ukrainian Administration Became More Efficient: Polish Expert

KYIV, Ukraine, May 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

The expert of the Polish Institute of International Affairs Lukasz Adamski praised Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych for his merits in making the government more efficient, but criticized him for restriction of political pluralism in Ukraine. The statement was released in Warsaw during a meeting between the Gorshenin Institute (GI) experts, a Ukrainian independent think-tank, and their Polish colleagues, reports Ukrainian news agency Levy Bereg (Lb.ua).

According to Adamski, it is clear that the operation of Ukrainian administration has become much more efficient because of Viktor Yanukovych and his government. The improvement has been highlighted by the European officials and politicians and became obvious, based on the negotiation process regarding the creation of the free trade zone between Ukraine and the EU. Such association, according to the Polish expert, will help expand mutual contacts, develop the European integration process of the transfer of European norms and, if successful, will be credited to Viktor Yanukovych.

On the other hand, Adamski is concerned about "the restriction of political pluralism in Ukraine." As an example, he mentioned the initiated trials against Yulia Tymoshenko and former officials or politicians from her camp.

According to Adamski: "There is no great political competition, which was in the years after the Orange Revolution." He also mentioned that the "President is successful, and has a chance to go down in history as the president who laid the foundation for the modernization of the state and European elections. But we see negative trends as well. I do not want to say that Ukraine has ceased to be democratic, but some achievements of the Orange Revolution and the scope of political pluralism narrowed and diminished."

The Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych took office in April 2010 and since then has managed to consolidate powers that his predecessors were competing for. His government identified and started implementing four key reforms, namely: tax, administrative, anti-corruption, and pension reforms. The administrative reform, designed to reduce the number of public servants by reorganizing the ministries and decreasing their number by a third, has brought significant changes to the executive power structure. As a result, most of the experts noted that the level of political stability had gone up.