Thread by @anders_aslund

Let us sort out a few things about the current Ukrainian situation:
1. Ukraine's current constitution was hastily put together by presidential chief of staff Viktor Medvedchuk. Some voted against it because it was so obviously contradictory. This is a low-quality constitution.

2. The Ukrainian Constitutional Court decided to abolish the December 2004 constitution in the fall of 2010 under Yanukovych, obviously leading Yanukovych. Many judges remain on that discredited court today.

3. Recently, the Constitutional Court that is supposed to interpret the constitution discredited itself thoroughly by claiming that the law on illicit enrichment, which is vital for all anti-corruption work, contradicts the rule of law. The Rada has to restore it asap.

4. The Poroshenko regime was frightfully corrupt. (That does not mean that all senior officials were corrupt.) The key task that the Ukrainian people have given Zelenskiy is to clean up this systemic corruption & break the old system.

5. When you try to break an old bad system, you need to bring in outsiders, who have knowledge but are not part of the old system (John Williamson 1994). That is exactly what Zelenskiy is doing. Most of his appointees are political amateurs, as in successful Estonia in 1992.

6. If you are to succeed to break up an old system, you need to start from the top, act very fast, replace all the most odious officials swiftly.

7. The dilemma is that if a new leader hits against all the insiders, he might antagonize the whole establishment and they unite against you and oust him. The difficult question is whom in the old system shall you compromise with & keep. That is the political art.

8. Zelenskiy has chosen to appoint foreign policy professionals of high repute, but he has made his own choice. That makes perfect sense. Diplomacy is not the rotten part of the system that needs to be replaced.

9. In the presidential administration, he has chosen one member of the old guard, Andriy Bohdan as chief. For the rest, he has appointed his old friends from Kvartal 95. In principle this makes sense. He clearly feels he needs one hard-core policy professional.

10. It is vital for a new regime to hold early parliamentary elections. Otherwise the old guard will block reforms through the parliament, especially in Ukraine where the distribution of power between president, parliament & government is so confused.

11. If Zelenskiy had failed to dissolve the parliament, he would have invited failure. Now he has sensibly agreed with all the parliamentary factions to hold early elections already on July 21. We should applaud rather than invoke Medvedchuk's constitution or a corrupt court.

12. Only after a new parliamentary election, a new government can be formed and a new reform program be adopted. Ukraine as the poorest country in Europe could hardly have afforded to sit waiting until the end of the year without real policy.

13. The big risk in an inter regnum is that the new guard cannot rule & the old guard feels no inhibition to steal more than ever. Therefore, an inter regnum or a period before parliamentary elections after a new president has come in is extremely dangerous & usually costly.

14. An absurd argument against Zelenskiy is that Kolomoiskiy, Boholiubov, Portnov, etc. have returned. How can Zelenskiy be accused for the current prosecutor general having failed to prosecute these people & the courts having failed to sentence them?

15. My conclusion is that we should let us be guided by sound democratic principles rather than a flawed constitution & a dysfunctional constitutional court & we should wish the new president the best of luck for the success of Ukraine, while carefully check his actions.