So the biggest political news from me recently has been mostly positive, but now it appears to be time to take the Yushchenko government to task.

Why, oh why, does the YuGov continue to make huge policy decisions without consulting anyone, then decide to have the discussion afterwards?

First there was the way the budget was tossed together. I thought it was a decent budget, as did Zerkalo Nedeli. But  Zerkalo did criticize the Cabinet for trotting it in front of Parliament without sufficient discussion.

Then the Kyiv Post marveled at the hastiness with which they changed the tax policy. My fellow employees of Celenia, along with all the other folks in Ukraine actually trying to pay their taxes properly, spent a few weeks of extreme axiety just trying to figure out if all of them will have to reregister in a different way just to be able to continue working as they have. They haven't stopped worrying because things have been cleared up, there simply hasn't been any news since the big announcement and so they don't know what to think.

[Update: I forgot to even mention the Eurovision contest, which has been a mess from the beginning. I have mentioned what a big mess it is earlier. The Kyiv Post is telling us to calm down and cut the country some slack, but this has definitely been another instance of everything getting done at the last minute.]

Actually, before  even the budget, there was Tymoshenko's poorly thought-out statement that the government would be reprivatizing as many as 3,000 businesses privatized under Kuchma. That has scared off, and will continue to scare off, many business who might otherwise be interested in investing in Ukraine, even though Yushchenko said the number would only be 30 shortly thereafter.

Overnight Paycuts

Now there is the problem with the interest rates. The whole problem began when the National Bank of Ukraine, working with Yuliya Tymoshenko, dramatically increased the strength of the Ukrainian currency, relative to the US dollar. The Eurasia Daliy Monitor explains the move here. According to them, in the beginning, Russian oil companies, which represent 80% of Ukraine's supply, kept the price of oil flowing to Ukraine low at the end of last year while the rest of the world was paying more. The reason for this move was that in doing so, they hoped to support Yanukovych, as the incumbent candidate, over Yushchenko, who, as the opposition candidate, would natuarally get protest votes from people angry about fuel hikes.

Once Yanukovych lost, there was no further reason for them to hold the rates here artificially low, so they started hiking them back up and there was precious little Tymoshenko could do to stop them. One thing she could do, though, was raise the power of the hryvnia against the dollar, making the dollar-denominated gas purchases less pricey. That is what the government did.

The IMF said bravo, a strong currency can help Ukraine ward off inflation worries, which will be particularly acute considering the general social spending in the new budget. Other banking folks also applauded, as this Zerkalo Nedeli article points out. Sounds great?

Unfortunately, while a good idea for the long term finacial outlook of the country, the move was also a huge blow to anyone who has dollar-denominated income in Ukraine. That happens to include pretty much everyone in the emerging middle class. For this reason, Yushchenko felt he needed to criticize his own government (without mentioning Tymoshenko, but directly criticizing the NBU Governor) for raising the rates so quickly without warning.

And this cuts to the heart of the matter. If the NBU had taken perhaps 3-4 months to raise the rates, or even 2 months, but bothered to tell everyone in advance what was going to happen, huge numbers of people wouldn't have lost a major chunk of their earnings (and savings if they've got them squirreled away in dollars) overnight, without warning.

Of course the same problem has occurred with the Melnychenko tapes. The YuGov didn't say much about Melnychenko until the end of March; when they pretty much said everything was wrapped up all in a couple weeks. Then Kravchenko [originally said Kirpa, please excuse me] died, and it's been almost dead silence ever since, with the exception of Berezovsky's claim to have handed over all the tapes to the YuGov [update: I gave up trying to keep up with this thing and here's a good explanation why. It's not exiled Russian tycoon Berezovsky who has the tapes now, according to this Kyiv Post article a Czech businessman named Boldanyuk claims to have them. What, are half the seedy characters in Europe just passing these things around like a hot potato?] Yu and his ministers have seemed pretty quiet themselves.

It is as if the Yushchenko government has no speeds but stopped and full throttle. They are silent for long stretches of time on a subject, then all of a sudden the current policy is jerked in a new direction, and people are scrambling desperately to figure out where the new policy is and running to catch up.

All these hasty moves that leave everyone here pretty jittery and give Russian news sources more real stuff to bitch about.

Transparency

Now, on the positive side, I am greatly encouraged by the fight with corruption. (I'm not entirely sure about the solidity of this material, because it is coming from Ukrainskaya Pravda, but they have a two part series, part one here, part two here, on massive embezzlment of oil and gas money under Kuchma. That should give you an idea of the scale of the problem.)

I trust this government to want to reform, fight corruption, and, most importantly here, be transparent. Increased transparency is one of Yushchenko's campaign promises (as are the other two).

Well, part of being transparent is not just telling people what you are doing, but also what you are going to do, and doing so well in advance.

This is a national problem, in a nation with no really good translation of the words "Mission Statement". Not just the government, but many, many organizations here change things without warning, leaving people scrabbling to catch up. It would be fine display of transparency if the government took the lead in fixing this problem.

[Credit where credit is due: I was planning to harp on this anyway, but Igor Sobolyev, writing in Korrespondent, beat me to this, mentioning the Yushchenko government's problems with hasty decisions in the April 30 issue of Korrespondent]