Keynote points of the discussion and abridged expositions of speaker reports are published below.
Keynote points:
The civic society is perceived as a comptroller able to exert pressure on the government. The government expects collaboration with, and support from, the civic society.
One important aspect is responsibility. Those at power have it prescribed for them in law; the civic society instead has to assume, calculate and ensure responsibility.
Inclusivity – that is, involvement in the recovery process – presumes CSOs are able to provide the government with fully-fledged assistance. The process of collaboration envisions not just negotiations but also discussion of how decisions are implemented and of the feedback options.
The parliament voted in two important decisions, the first one being the Istanbul Convention and the second one, the Anti-corruption Strategy. There is already a clear understanding of what needs to be done and when. Each committee has a relevant group set up with it; the group will be in charge of verifying compliance with EU legislation.
The recovery process has two serious risks involved, the one of corruption and the one of inefficiency. The task of the cabinet is to suggest transparent and comprehensible mechanisms of interaction between the government, the public, businesses, donors and foreign governments.
More than 30 CSOs and the Ministry for Economy and Infrastructure have already joined the RISE initiative. Verkhovna Rada committees and a coalition of CSOs also intend to join.
There is not enough calls for proposals in Ukraine, which would provide CSOs and think tanks with opportunities of being proactively involved in specific commissions, receiving remuneration for that and producing quality and necessary work results.
Transcript of discussion (for the video of full discussion please follow the link)
– How the nation leaders perceive the civic society as a participant in the current national recovery process?
Olena Shuliak
If we are talking about the civic society in a wider sense, it is now working on multiple fronts and assisting the country on the military front, the international one and on the front related to economic growth. We do understand and recognise the powerful role the civic society should play in the process of recovery of our country and that it has to take multiple opportunities in order to change certain things.
Regarding the recovery process, I would like to outline the three different phases that may happen in parallel. The first phase concerns fast operational recovery that is happening right now in deoccupied areas. Everyone knows the cabinet has already earmarked more than UAH1.5 billion from the reserve fund for fast response measures related to transport, engineering infrastructure, heat and water supply. Now they do current repairs of residential and administrative buildings to repair the damage and prepare for the heating season.
The second phase is about rebuilding of scale and new development. As of today, the Russian Federation has ruined more than 16 mln m2 residential stock – more than 40 thousand across the whole Ukraine. There is an ongoing discussion with international partners as to when the recovery should start: after the victory or possibly now.
The third phase is related to a big chunk of work, which is about modernising our whole country, continuing with reforms that could not be finalised for long. These reforms are aimed at fastest possible acquiring by Ukraine of the full membership in the European Union. The civic society has to obligatorily play its role at all the three phases. Unfortunately, it is perceived as a comptroller only able to exert pressure on the government. It is necessary to review these moments now because at the time of war we need to focus all the resources so to keep the civic society as a comptroller would be a waste of it.
In 2015–2019, I worked at the Better Regulation Delivery Office, also a vivid civic society representative, and we had communication with the Ministry of Economy. Such collaboration left me with a certain understanding of how easy and nice cooperation with the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine can be. However, I would not say the same about our work with the parliament. Unfortunately, after 4.5 years not a single BRDO initiative was able to go through the parliament. We did manage to register some draft legislations, do certain things related to advocacy but we were never able to lead a bill to second hearing and get 226 votes on screen. Because of that, I now clearly understand how difficult it may be for civic society representatives to make themselves heard by the government. We have this understanding when we see representatives coming to us with good constructive initiatives, we try to advocate for them in the parliament, lead them to the final stage when an initiative becomes a real law.
When implementing unpopular reforms or sometimes making steps that hurt, we face a huge problem. One good example is land reform’s path through the parliament. Unfortunately, the loud voice of the civic society becomes rather muffled, almost impossible to hear. The civic society stages no action to support such unpopular reforms – unlike our opponents, who are able to demonstrate public wrath in front of the Verkhovna Rada and order broad media campaigns, we lack the support of the civic society at the time when we need it the most.
We would like to have this civic society’s support now, when we are to talk about, and implement many things related to recovery – probably, not so popular. This is of paramount importance for us.
Another aspect I would like to talk about concerns the responsibility. We as the power are now carrying the burden of responsibility proscribed in law. Even more: we as MPs have to shoulder certain reputational risks. As the author of the ‘black swan’ theory, Nassim Thalleb, had it in one of his books, ‘In order to assert something and make certain forecasts one has to be his own skin’. Which is about recognising responsibility.
So, when I am talking, for example, about my reputation at the parliament as an MP, when I am making some reforms, I am ready to bet on my skin, my whole reputation with a clear recognition of why I am doing this. Therefore, civic society representatives would be rather welcome to demonstrate the same level of responsibility. When we talk about recovery, the responsibility must extend to the braking – blocking – of certain processes because time is of essence and critical importance in the process of recovery.
Probably, the matter of a type of responsibility that the civic society is ready to assume and ways of calculating it, taking it into account and providing it should become the topic of our next discussion. That is, if we are talking about recognising collaboration with the civic society, then yes, the people in government are ready for such collaboration and there is an understanding of and the will for this joint responsibility that we will share with all its positives and negatives.
– What format civic society involvement should have to be more constructive rather that a show of emotion and noise?
Oleh Rybachuk
If we are to talk about how to set up collaboration and how to ensure the civic society is the most influential, we need to revert to a buzzword that has actively entered the Ukrainian vocabulary: inclusivity. Inclusivity was all the talk in Lugano; in plain Ukrainian it is about being involved. I do not remember any government that would say they do not want to see or hear civic society, that they need not to consult anyone and can decide everything by themselves. No one has said that, everyone is always ready to collaborate.
I can hardly remember for the years of independence the number of public councils every official would have with his office at the time of Yanukovych’s regime. Public councils were created en masse via dedicated campaigns; they were at every ministry – but for the reasons I would rather hate to mention now. My understanding of involvement is really about government officials and civic society representatives getting together to speak jointly, like consultations. Importantly, such consultations must happen not only when a decision is being made. The collaboration process should envision not only negotiations but also ways of monitoring how decisions are being implemented, plus feedback. We have not got any of these to date.
The question of are CSOs able to provide the government with fully-fledged assistance is the same one because CSOs can be different. There are CSOs that often act as politicians raising hype around popular topics without going too deep and looking for as many likes as possible on social media. There are other organisations able to, and really working with government representatives; they are not very keen about letting the whole world know about it because it is decisions that are important for them. Generally, the root of the problem is in the fact that neither the government nor the civic society have been able to find this full involvement format. It can happen at some stage with individual institutions and officials, between individual CSOs. It is not enough to simply join our efforts to restore the Ukraine of our dream. It would be a challenge to imagine rebuilt institutions governed by old timers, beautiful modern court houses full of old justices or the current form of government tasked with decisions-making. Therefore, what is important for us now is not to rebuild Ukraine with just new buildings simply filling them with old post-Communist rot. It is important for us to have an independent and effective government, the one in which heads of units and departments, deputy ministries will have the scope of authority similar to the one in the EU, also a really wide spectrum of responsibilities and capacity to make decisions.
Our army has been successful because of delegation of authority when commanders at different levels are allowed to make decisions. Because of that we are now stronger than the vertically-built russian army. We need to forget about our officials getting tense and waiting for a call from a certain office like it has been throughout the time of our independence. A government that is formally responsible for everything is just the executor. It would rather difficult to implement the collaboration we are discussing now in such format.
– We want to succeed. The civic society is looking for ways of becoming involved and make something decent. How this can be achieved? What to start with? Any recommendations?
Oleh Rybachuk
Ukraine has got a chance it has not had for 30 years: we received a political status of candidate to membership in the European Union. I could only dream of that when making the office of vice prime minister. We have a task of exceptional importance; there are seven commitments we took. Five of them are about the justice and the anti-corruption reforms. Independent government, opposition, civic society – we need to make sure Ukraine complies with these things so that we are able to start fully fledged EU membership negotiations from 1 January next year.
Every time we talk about something we are looking for a model or developing a road map – a draft road map. Now we have several months and an exceptionally important task of doing everything in a way as not to give a single argument to critics among EU leaders who voted without great enthusiasm and said Ukraine would fail. It is a matter of survival for us now. If Ukraine wants to be successful, if we want to rebuild a modern modernised country, we must be in the EU family. It is a matter of security, a matter of NATO.
I belong to the people who work in the public sector to approximate Ukraine to European standards, which cover all areas of our operations from human rights to economic rules to protection of investor interests to ways in which the government machinery operates. Therefore, I call to pay maximum attention to the fulfilment of obligations. In some weeks it will be two months since Ukraine obtained its status and publicly committed to performing obligations. Some things have been done but little time is left until the New Year, so we need to see we will not be left with something not completed with the war to blame and explanations to be sought.
– How would you build constructive work with the civic society?
Olena Shuliak
I did like the mention of ‘life’. Truly not all of our international partners believed in candidacy for Ukraine, and certain concerns were expressed. On the eve of the granting, the parliament adopted two important decisions, the first one on Istanbul Convention that was talked about for 11 years with no courage to adopt it because of some certain things not supported by the parliament. The second one was the Anti-corruption Strategy for which the parliament could not find votes or possibilities of approval even in spite of NACP’s fruitful cooperation with MPs.
When we gathered in the parliament on the eve of being granted the status of candidate to the EU, it was the understanding, the realisation of the ‘life’ matter that led to adoption of such important documents. There is a clear understanding now what needs to be done, how many European integration-related bills need to be approved and when.
Now every committee has a group to verify compliance with EU legislation established. I think we will manage the task just right.
When talking about the recovery, we actually are wary of two risks, the one related to corruption, and the one of inefficiency. We are currently regarding it as an extraordinary challenge and try to work to mitigate these risks. Our enemies are already forging the image of Ukraine as a corrupt state that should not be given money because it will be either stolen or inefficiently spent. All this will be done to weaken to the max the trust between Ukraine and our international partners because the recovery will be mostly done with their money. Shaking the trust and making everything to prevent us from getting funding – this is exactly the workings of our enemies.
Therefore, our task in line with our national interests is to suggest from the outset mechanisms of interaction between the government, the public, businesses, donors and foreign governments so transparent and comprehensible as to prevent any questions about corruption and inefficiency.
I personally liked the Rise Initiative. I believe in it. It was presented in Lugano; now we have more than 30 CSOs and the Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure join it. I also expect Verkhovna Rada committees and the coalition of civic society organisations to follow the suit and make the Initiative even bigger. These CSOs will collaborate with the government but the key role will be reserved for the latter as the one responsible for operational recovery outcomes.
The coalition has already set certain tasks for itself. It is about transparent accountability, digitalisation to understand how the recovery process is going to be managed, also about publishing open data at all recovery stages. The coalition intends to also engage in various communication processes because in our circumstances a true, fair and comprehensible communication plays a paramount role in all recovery processes. As a representative of authority, I welcome the establishment of such coalition and the maximum involvement for the sake of a joint result aimed not just on recovery but also on victory of our country. We have demonstrated the ability to join our forces in situations critical for us, and the key thing for us now is not to waste this our capacity.
Now, a couple of words to describe my vision of civic society involvement. The government, the central bodies of the Executive need professional expertise today. E.g., the Ministry of Community and Territory Development is working on matters of which exactly civil defence system should be built in Ukraine, which countries’ experience should we learn from, what to do with energy efficiency as the terrorist nation, the killer nation will not simply shell our cities but also engage in energy blackmail.
There are many questions like that, and it is professional industrial community representatives who regularly find answers for us. We can be with them 24/7 analysing best international experience and taking best expertise to make these exact decisions that will be most optimal and enabling for Ukraine.
I have already mentioned – and can only emphasize once again – the interaction with anti-corruption initiatives. Everything related to combating corruption should be implemented as soon as possible and in line with clear-cut rules.
A huge number of Ukrainians – those who have remained here and those who are currently working abroad – want to be involved in the recovery process. The question is how to ask the civic society to help us ensure that all Ukrainians who want to participate in the recovery process are involved to the max. One can actively called upon the public in different ways, people can be joined, united and involved as much as possible in every process, and we are ready to work on it together with civic society representatives. It will be practically impossible to manage the recovery process, all anti-corruption initiatives – for example, measure all budgets – create various transparency rules from the centre. A network of representative offices at the regional level is needed where ordinary people and the professional environment, local self-government representatives will be involved as much as possible and influence all the recovery-linked processes.
– Is Rise Platform an entry point for civic society representatives ready to suggest something?
I don’t know. Possibly, there exist some other platforms that can be used for collaboration purposes. As of today, I really like the fact that 30 organizations have been able to unite and provide certain advice on how to build clear rules for cooperation with all donors, foreign governments, local self-government, executive power and, particularly, the parliament.
– As a CSO leader, I am interested in the following: how do you reckon the many community and public initiatives may become constructive for us to be heard?
Oleh Rybachuk
Throughout the history of independent Ukraine, we had lots of coalitions, platforms of sort which sometimes still makes one dream about that civil society united enough to have its own supreme governing bodies, its own political bureau. Then, so to say, the government could build relations with civil society leaders. This will never happen in reality because both governments, the public and various civic organisations do change. There is little we can add to those forms of cooperation that have appeared in Ukraine over the past 30 years.
The current government is very closely monitoring social media, moods and information waves. Therefore, if you want to attract authorities’ attention, you have to start a wave. The authorities begin to somehow react when certain things send ripples With digital progress, this factor will only grow so it is important for CSOs to learn how to nurture their followers because when I see a post on Facebook about what do we need to do to get people out on the streets… One has to convince them they should do it. We have already discovered the main ways of collaboration and it would be rather difficult to design something new here.
It is important for the government to have a right structure because if we hold consultations in one place and decisions are made in another there will be not too much sense in these consultations.
– The civic society is now carefully monitoring the decisions-making and responsibilities on a daily basis checking them against state standards in many countries. Could you name some standards that could serve the example for both the government and the civic society?
One standard that appeared in Ukrainian thanks to one congresswoman is oversight – the public control when you can be sure that the authorities will report, demonstrate and feedback on any of your questions. This is what trust is built on. If there is a wide public control, if the public or journalists or CSOs receive exhaustive answers to their inquiries, there will be trust, influence and collaboration.
If we simply pretend to be collaborating and then use the language about the war, information sensitivity or secrecy without providing citizens with answers to the questions of concern for them, then we will not build trust and such efficient collaboration will not happen.
– It is necessary to involve civic society representatives – e.g., bloggers or their direct representatives – in implementation of initiatives but each such involvement should include a responsible person. It won’t fly without personal responsibility.
CSOs respond with their reputation. At some point we had hundreds of meetings arranged worldwide and in Europe to demand and convince the EU about our candidate status; now this is beyond our scope. It is now the government who has to implement a certain decision because we already pledged our reputation, we have already convinced the world we are worth it, we can, we have changed. Therefore, the responsibility is rather high and if we lose it, we will actually lose an opportunity of being an efficient civic society organisation, and no one will collaborate with us.
Olena Shuliak
As the government, it is very important for us to show professionalism at every stage that the civic society joins us because expertise and professionalism are not what we always get. For example, I attend all discussions related to the pension reform with a printout from CASE Ukraine with all the calculations. It is very easy to work with opponents with such research with figures and examples at hand. However, not every organisation is able to provide such professional things, especially when we talk about anti-corruption initiatives. Such studies have no complete professional component, only a background, and when they turn to personalities or emotional aspects, it is practically impossible to work.
How to tell the professional organisations able to add something important to collaboration from those more involved in political commissions?
Oleh Rybachuk
In Ukraine we do not have it when the Ukrainian authorities working on a given order announce competitions, calls for proposals. The problem of the Ukrainian government is it should launch a call for proposals and be able to pay a reward for it. That is, there should be a direct link, something that think tanks around the world are doing when the government reimburses or pays for quality analytical products.
Everything is very distorted here: if there is any money, there appear somewhat murky CSOs close to certain government officials. If we could create such a conditional competition market through a tender, then it would be possible to weed them out very quickly, to see which of CSOs is able do a quality work.
– What specific forms of responsibility – moral, legal, administrative, reputational – would you envisage for the civic society?
Olena Shuliak
It’s all of the above. For example, we as parliamentary corps representatives submit our income statements to the NAPC while representatives of anti-corruption CSOs do not. There has already been a discussion in the public as to is it necessary or not, but it is also indicative of a symmetric responsibility and attitude to the process.
It is the reputational responsibility that is important to me. Perhaps, civic society representatives should also think about how to make sure that, after certain reputation failures, such people are no longer able to call themselves the civic society representatives who try to influence decisions of the government.
– Is the government ready to respond to accusations with argument? Hiding from answering under ‘we are hunted and bullied’ is always the easiest way
Olena Shuliak
There can be only one answer, and it is: of course, ready. For example, being myself a specialist in urban planning, I would like to answer to arguments of urban planning specialists, to technical complex questions, not to people with no experience or knowledge or education only driven by emotions.
– The reputational matter is rather sensitive for the civic society. We all know of organisations of a rather specific pedigree that nevertheless operate in a different field. What do you think of that?
Oleh Rybachuk
In the information society, the reputation is what people say about you. Therefore, formally, it would not be difficult to find CSOs that meet the highest standards of work from the western point of view. These will be the ones that have passed first-class audits and with which democratic governments cooperate.
Ukrainian organisations can exist at the expense of those at power in Ukraine (and those at power make no such orders) or grant funds. If the funding comes from a Ukrainian businessperson or oligarch – I have some experience with it, I tried this type of cooperation – then the oligarch demands something completely different. This is why CSOs exist with international funds; but both Russian and Ukrainian propaganda simply try to kill the trust telling the Ukrainian public that these are the individuals ready to do whatever the West needs from them with Western funds. It has become more difficult now because we long to the West that is actually standing with us in the struggle for the independence of Ukraine.
If it is not possible to discuss what an organisation proposes based on its merits offers with uncomfortable questions it can publicly ask, then the best way to discredit this organisation via black PR campaigns, which have been, are, and, unfortunately, will probably continue to be in existence. No special recipe to come up with here. One of the recipes is for the Ukrainian authorities to allow Ukrainian think tanks to bid at tenders, win the opportunity to provide consultations, receive funds for this and report.
Income statements are the must for government officials who use taxpayers’ money. If a CSO is not using public money, there is nothing to discuss. A CSO is controlled by someone who gives it the money.
Olena Shuliak
When civic society representatives with no good reputation, professionalism or expertise but still called civic society representatives use various dirty methods and begin to put certain pressure on the government to force it to a certain decision, the virtuous civil society stands aside.
The government is ready to protect those who work honestly, professionally and constructively. I would like to make a counter proposal to civic society representatives: you could also protect us from those who bring coffins to ministries or order crazy dirty PR publications. Then, with mutual support, the level of trust would be much higher and it would be possible to build a very good relationships, which would have a future.