Yatsenyuk Nomination for Prime-Minister looks Distrubing

UKRAINE - In Brief 26 Feb 2014 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Batkivshchyna party, was nominated for the prime-minister post today at Maidan. A lot of new names were presented for his Cabinet. Tomorrow the parliament will be voting for this decision. In our opinion, Arseniy Yatsenyuk is not the best choice for this post. He has never been an independent player and placing him in a position of prime-minister in such a critical situation might appear to be a mistake. Mr. Yatseniuk used to be inclined to populist decisions and it is a huge risk for this Cabinet. Especially, in view that he will likely to be supervised by Yuliya Tymoshenko who is also a well-known populist. Another interesting question is how the diverse Cabinet that was presented will be working as a team. It is a very good step that many of the potential ministers were nominated from Maidan. However, given rather weak head of the Cabinet we have concerns about building a team play. Names at the economic block are positive but it is difficult to say if they will be successful as ‘crisis managers’. Minister of finance is Oleksandr Shlapak, a person who managed to hold different posts in various governments (including minister of economy and first deputy head of president office). However, we do not have clear view of his potential reform plans. Minister of economy Pavlo Sheremeta is a former business school head and currently a president of Kyiv School of Economics. He proved to be a strong manager and he has liberal views. We hope his performance at the Cabinet will be a success. Name of the Minister of revenues and charges was not announced but rumors point to Oleksandra Kuzhel, a person who used to fight for small and medium enterprises developm...