Cancellation of earlier decisions, rotation of ambassadors, and competitions for civil service: decisions by Cabinet and President

Recently, Ukraine has reported the highest numbers of new COVID cases and COVID-related deaths per day (among European countries). It seems that the Cabinet and the Ministry of Health do not put enough effort to protect Ukrainian citizens from the pandemic and ensure real progress in vaccination.

Today we will focus on what the President and the Government were doing in the meantime.

Decision-maker: the Cabinet.

Who is affected: landowners, businesses, local governments, territorial offices of state bodies, the Cabinet, and other central executive bodies.

Resolution in a nutshell: the Cabinet canceled its earlier decision to dissolve territorial offices of the StateGeoCadastre as legal entities under public law.

Why this is important:

• on November 6, 2020, the Cabinet issued a resolution to dissolve territorial offices of the StateGeoCadastre
• Roman Leshchenko, the Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food and the former head of the StateGeoCadastre argued that this decision will be the first step towards transforming the agency into a body providing citizens with high-quality services and filling in the cadaster
• according to Roman Leshchenko, dissolution of territorial offices should have saved ₴500 mln that henceforth would be spend on digitalization, optimization of state registries, and a full-fledged launch of the National infrastructure of geospatial data
• recently, however, experts from the Security Service uncovered a fraud scheme used by the employees of the StateGeoCadastre, so this new governmental resolution was probably issued to avoid risks from the centralization of the Cadaster.

What is wrong: the Cabinet does not have a consistent policy on the issue since it canceled its own decision made just half a year ago.

Decision-maker: the President.

Who is affected: Ukrainian citizens living abroad, foreign and national businesses, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, diplomatic officials, the President, and foreign state bodies.

Decrees in a nutshell: the following ambassadors are dismissed:

• Yuriy Polurez, Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates (since 2010), to the Kingdom of Bahrain (since 2011), and Representative to the International Agency for Renewable Energy Sources (since 2018)
• Vsevolod Chentsov, Ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands (since 2017) and Representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (since 2017)
• Mykola Tochytskyi, Ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium (since 2016), the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (since 2016), and Representative to the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community (since 2016)
• Viktor Nedopas, Ambassador to the Republic of Iraq (since 2017)
• Andriy Beshta, Ambassador to the Kingdom of Thailand (since 2015), to the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (since 2017), and to the Union of Myanmar (since 2017)
• Yurii Klymenko, Representative to the UN Office and other international organizations in Geneva (since 2013)
• Vadym Vakhrushev, Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (since 2014), to the Sultanate of Oman (since 2015), and to the Republic of Yemen (since 2019).

What is right:

• the rotation was a long-awaited decision. Diplomats, as a rule, could serve abroad for up to four years. Some of the ambassadors dismissed by Zelensky held their positions much longer
• in democracies, rotation is essential in building a diplomatic service. It ensures that the service remains professional and prevents representatives of the diplomatic core from becoming too close to the countries they are serving in.

What’s next: the President has to appoint new representatives of Ukraine in the nearest future.

To know more about the President’s decision to start the rotation of ambassadors, please read the article Why Zelensky fires able ambassadors of Ukraine? by Serhii Sydorenko, Editor in Chief of the European Pravda.

Decision-maker: the Cabinet.

Who is affected: Ukrainian citizens, the Cabinet, employees of some executive bodies, local governments, drivers, businesses, employees of the forest sector, and transportation organizations.

Resolutions in a nutshell: competitions for the following positions were announced:

• deputy head of the State Agency of Forest Resources of Ukraine
• head of the National Agency of Ukraine for Civil Service
• state secretary of the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade, and Agriculture
• deputy head of the State Agency of Automobile Roads of Ukraine
• deputy head of the State Audit Service for Digital Development, Digital Transformations, and Digitalization.

What is right: with proper competitions, civil service will eventually become apolitical and start to work for the interests of the state, not politicians. Citizens’ trust in state bureaucracy will be restored.

To know more about the pitfalls of the presidential amendments to the draft bill reintroducing proper competitions for civil service positions, please check the article by our analyst Oleh Savychuk Make everyone an acting minister

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