CRISIS OF IMPLEMENTATION, OR UNREAD LECTURE FOR NEW POLITICIANS

In many ways, a lot of present-day realia reminds me of Groundhog Day. I have already experienced all this in one form or another during different periods of our modern history. The breakthrough of new politicians, surge of unrealistic expectations and emotions. But all of these always ended in disappointment and failure. Of course, each situation is unique, but also quite the same in its essence. You donʼt believe it?

The year 2014. Yatsenyuk forms the government of the leading “technocrats”, and we still see them today. The Association Agreement, visa-free regime, “My new police”, the launch of decentralization, an unprecedented set of anti-corruption laws in October 2014, a “unique” coalition agreement and a coalition majority in Parliament… You can go back to 2004 and recall the statements about accession to the EU in 2008. Maybe similar things were happening in 1991, but I was too young then.

It is obvious that the failures which follow these euphorias have the very same reason. This reason is very simple – the crisis of implementation, or, in other words, the inability to implement the declared goals.

I often compare Ukraine with a ruined car. This is an old Soviet Lada, the oil is leaking from it, it uses insane volumes of gasoline with its small engine and develops a speed close to the speed of bike. But every new driver who gets behind the wheel is convinced that previously the car was not working right because there were bad drivers.

Next, I will try to describe the key things that may help to avoid history repeating itself.

Implementation of anything requires having several simple components:

1. Personnel
2. Resources
3. Monitoring and evaluation

And in conclusion. I really want the new government to succeed.

Victor Andrusiv, the Executive Director of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future.