Volodymyr Groysman’s tenure as vice Prime Minister could have ended after the 100 days that he had worked in Arseniy Yatseniuk’s team. Immediately after the inauguration, President Petro Poroshenko asked him to lead his Administration. Groysman refused, motivating it with the necessity to finish what he started in the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Essentially, the reform of local government.
“If we are to give power to the oblasts, we will get feudal principalities; no, the power should be delegated to territorial communities directly,” says Groysman. In “civilian life,” so before Maidan, the young mayor of Vinnytsya was considered one of the most successful mayors in the country. Mobilised to the government, today he works in the office he inherited from Olexandr Vilkil and Boris Kolesnikov.
Groysman has already prepared the theoretical basis of the reform, the realisation of which in practice is being halted by war. In addition, purely political circumstances are unfolding as well: the new Constitution, re-election, without which any means will be half-baked.
This interview is the dissolution of stereotypes. The stereotype that decentralisation is something extremely complex and complicated, that one cannot make sense of that. That it is not beneficial to regular citizens, but the local elites, which are simply fooling the regular citizens. That decentralisation and coherent budget policies are discordant. That Donbas is unique in its demands to be “heard in Kyiv.”
“I remember the social investigations that were conducted from time to time in central Ukraine. In particular, in Vinnytsya. The measures of non-acceptance of the central government: the President, Prime Minister, its other representatives, is stably over 50%. Anti-ratings were simply off the scale,” says Groysman. Continue reading
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