Five Years of Amateurish Imitation

October 11, was the fifth anniversary of the so-called “course of radical market reforms.” This a very specific date. On the one hand, a traditional rattle in the officious media, on the other hand, attempts made by the current authorities to make maximum use of this date in the election campaign. In any case, the anniversary of the “reform course” sums up the current President's activities in the economic sphere and his performance in his post in general.

The past five years have seen an unprecedented, by the standards of Central and East European countries, rate of decline. What is more, the ever- falling state of the economy has run into permanent contradiction with the official promises of growth, which seems to have become a solid national tradition. In the eight months of this year alone, GDP dropped by 2.8%, while the September issue of Central European Economic Review forecasts, on the basis of data for 13 countries of the region, that Ukraine can show growth only in 2001. By such an indicator as per capita gross domestic product, Ukraine holds a steady last place with $834, while Slovenia has $9,899; the Czech Republic $5,350; and Hungary $4,676. Despite all efforts of the official propaganda and individual volunteers, only a crazy person can discern “positive changes” in these indicators. In practice, no results have been achieved in carrying out macroeconomic reforms in the past five years.

The current President's five year activities in the economic field have culminated in with running up a record-breaking $12.5-billion foreign debt nobody knows how to service. The current authorities are confidently assuming the image of a cheerful commuter train, which either begs for, with tears in its eyes, or forcibly extorts money from the world community. That this country is unable to make $3.3 billion foreign-debt payments in 2000 is as obvious as is the desire of those presently in power to mute this point until after the elections.

Living standards continue to decline steadily. Growing unemployment, reduced real incomes, arrears in wages, salaries, and other social payments, which exceeded UAH 12 billion in mid-September: all this testifies to the disintegration of the state's economic foundations rather than to the “undoubted successes of the course of radical market reforms.” Incidentally, what in this case should make the broad masses of the population vote for the “practical implementer” of this course?

Indeed, it is very difficult to find any positive results of the five years of this infamous course. The only seemingly successful event was the monetary reform carried out in 1996. However, it was essentially a banal redenomination without any bearing on the state's fundamental economic mechanisms. What is also positive is the absence in the state of any mass actions of social disobedience, but this is despite, rather than because of, the so- called “course of reforms.”

As to things negative, their list is, unfortunately, endless. Among them are failures in privatization, industrial degradation, fast progress of the shadow economy, and the collapse of agriculture. This sequence can be continued ad infinitum. Obviously, the presence and development of negative phenomena plus the absence of anything positive can by no means testify to “successes of the course of reforms.”

In this context, the current President's following pre-election promises look rash, to put it mildly: “to ensure at least 7% annual economic growth, to create one million new jobs, and increase the population's real incomes by 1.6 times.” And the assurances that the 1994 pre-election program “has been fulfilled completely” must have been calculated for intellectually inferior citizens and a narrow circle of the current President's dubious supporters.

What has seriously affected the situation, in addition to the absence of a desire to do anything in the economy, was the glaring lack of professionalism of the President's economic team. You cannot seriously try to become “the ideologist of a market transformation” of the state, having only “the Leninist stage of the Marxist political economy of socialism” as your background. For, being a “popularizer of the Party's wise decisions” by nature and way of thinking, you cannot possibly offer the country and society something adequate to market realities.

Perhaps even now nobody thinks over the very idea of professionalism in public administration and economic decision-making. The President's staff has in fact shown no professionalism in this way for the past five years.

What was disguised on the official level as the “course of radical market reforms” essentially boiled down to quite an unskilled imitation of activity based on rather primitive propaganda. If somebody still hoped for probable changes while our President was in office, the last pre-election year has completely dispelled even the slightest doubts.

The fifth anniversary of the notorious “course of radical reforms” is in fact the culmination of five years of amateurish imitation of reform. We can only anticipate that this sad period in our state's development will end very soon.