A8 ez re THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAy, MARCH 18 , 2020
The World
IRAQ
Ex-governor named
premier-designate
Iraq’s president named a
former governor of Najaf
province as prime minister-
designate on Tuesday, following
weeks of political infighting, as
Baghdad residents rushed to
stock up on supplies hours before
a days-long curfew was set to
take hold amid the global
coronavirus pandemic.
Adnan al-Zurfi was appointed
premier-designate by President
Barham Salih after tense meetings
between rival political blocs that
went on for weeks without
yielding a consensus on a
candidate to replace outgoing
prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi.
H ours after the
announcement, the powerful
Fatah parliamentary bloc
rejected Zurfi’s candidacy,
signaling a rocky path to
government formation for the
premier-designate. Fatah
accused Salih of “disregarding”
the constitution and naming
Zurfi in the absence of consensus.
The development came after
an earlier premier-designate
withdrew his candidacy.
Zurfi was appointed Najaf’s
governor in 2004 by Paul Bremer,
who led the Coalition Provisional
Authority following the 2003
invasion of Iraq, and later served
in the same post between 2009
and 2015.
Zurfi’s naming came hours
before the coronavirus-related
curfew was to take effect in
Baghdad as Iraq struggles to
contain the spread of the virus.
Iraq has had 11 deaths from
among 154 confirmed cases.
— Associated Press
YEMENClashes kill at least 38
in central provinceHeavy fighting in Yemen
between pro-government forces
and Shiite rebels killed more thanthree dozen people in a span of 24
hours, Yemeni officials and tribal
leaders said Tuesday.
The rebels, known as Houthis,
have been attacking forces of the
internationally recognized
government in the district of
Sorouh in central Marib province.Fierce clashes left at least 38
fighters from both sides dead and
wounded dozens, the officials
said.
The officials and tribal leaders
said the rebels advanced deep into
the district before government
forces pushed them back andcaptured at least 30 Houthis.
The fighting came three weeks
after the Houthis dealt a major
blow to the Saudi-backed
government when they took the
strategic northern city of Hazm,
capital of Jawf province, which
borders Marib.Yemen, the Arab world’s
poorest nation, has been
convulsed by civil war since 2014,
when the Iran-backed Houthis
took control of northern Yemen,
including the capital, Sanaa.
A Saudi-led military coalition
intervened against the Houthis
the following year. Despite
relentless Saudi airstrikes and a
blockade of Yemen, the war has
ground to a stalemate.
— Associated PressJudge appeals decision freeing
Lebanese American: A Lebanese
military judge appealed a verdict
by the military tribunal that
ordered the release of a Lebanese
American held since September
on charges of working for an
Israeli-backed militia two decades
ago, the state-run National News
Agency said. Judge Ghassan
Khoury asked the Military Court
of Appeals to overturn a ruling in
favor of Amer Fakhoury and issue
an arrest warrant. On Monday,
Fakhoury was ordered released
because more than 10 years had
passed since he allegedly tortured
inmates at a jail run by the South
Lebanon Army militia.Niger says army killed 50 Boko
Haram extremists: Niger said its
army has killed at least 50 Boko
Haram extremists in the wake of
a weekend attack on a military
post. The government of the West
African nation said the army
used air and ground forces to kill
the fighters and destroy a large
number of vehicles. One soldier
was injured. Boko Haram is
based in neighboring Nigeria. Its
decade-long insurgency has
focused on attacks inside that
country, but it has also staged
attacks in Niger and Cameroon.
— From news servicesDIGESTmUNIr Uz zAmAN/AgeNce FrANce-presse/geTTy ImAges
An aerial view shows a worker leaving chili peppers to dry on the embankments of the Jamuna River in the Bogra district of
northern Bangladesh. Chilies are an important crop in many districts of the country, which also grows rice. wheat, mangoes and jute.BY ROBYN DIXON
AND DAVID L. STERNKYIV, UKraIne — Maksym Mel-
nichenko flew through the first stage
of tests meant to weed out the
corrupt and incompetent from
Ukraine’s notorious prosecution ser-
vice. He answered 100 computer
questions in 100 minutes to pass with
flying colors. Two weeks later, he
passed stage two, an IQ test, scoring a
116.
Then came stage three: the inter-
view. Ninety minutes of questions
about his overseas trips and the
property of his wife, mother and
parents-in-law was enough to raise
“reasonable doubt” about his integri-
ty, the investigating commission said.
Melnichenko, like hundreds of other
prosecutors, was sacked.
Anti-corruption activists call it the
most sweeping reform of the prose-
cution system in Ukraine’s history. To
Melnichenko, 37, a father of three
young children, and to hundreds of
other prosecutors appealing their
firings in court (where judges are also
known for corruption), it’s a travesty.
Now a nti-corruption activists see a
different travesty: the dismissal of
Ruslan Ryaboshapka, the prosecutor
general who instigated the anti-
corruption drive, replaced Tuesday
by Iryna Venediktova, a former advis-
er to President Volodymyr Zelensky
and lawmaker from his party.
Ryaboshapka was fired by parlia-
ment on March 5 after six months on
the job. He was pushed out by a
faction in Zelensky’s Servant of the
People party that anti-corruption
crusaders and political analysts say is
close to the powerful oligarch Ihor
Kolomoisky. (Kolomoisky and the
lawmakers deny any links.)
Zelensky is a former comedian
who played the president on the
television show “Servant of the Peo-
ple” before winning the office last
April. The show was aired by Kolo-
moisky’s network.
Zelensky said Ryaboshapka had
failed to produce results. But the
sacking shocked observers. His at-
tack on corruption i n the prosecution
service was seen by good-governance
advocates as a seismic reform. Ye t
here was the populist president — a
man whose broad-based political
support gave him the best chance in
decades of modernizing Ukraine’s
ossified and corrupt political and law
enforcement institutions — abruptly
veering away f rom a crucial reform of
the prosecution service toward...
what, exactly?
Ryaboshapka’s firing came just
after Zelensky removed the young
reformist prime minister, Oleksiy
Honcharuk, and most of his govern-
ment after less than a year on the job.
“Shame is the only word I can use
to describe what has happened in
parliament,” journalist Kristina Ber-
dynskykh tweeted earlier this month.
“Zelensky has made a sharp turn in
what is obviously the wrong direc-
tion.”the history of Ukraine.”
“You understand, before the arriv-
al of Ryaboshapka, the prosecutor’s
office was an instrument of repres-
sion and pressure,” Chumak said in
an interview before Venediktova was
appointed. “A nd it was an instrument
of political games. It was an instru-
ment of pressure on political oppo-
nents.
“The one who broke that system
was Ryaboshapka. Everything began
to be done according to the law.”
Chumak blamed Ryaboshapka’s
firing on “politicians,” “oligarchs”
and “regional figures who were in
power for a long time and have
long-term corrupt ties with local law
enforcement bodies.”
“Ryaboshapka was unsuitable be-
cause he did not carry out any
political demands,” he said.
In 2015, then-Vice President Joe
Biden and European partners were
pushing Ukraine to address corrup-
tion. They called on Ukraine’s presi-
dent, Petro Poroshenko, to dismiss
General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin,
who was seen by Western diplomats
as resisting reform. Former New York
mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s
personal lawyer, says Biden sought
Shokin’s d ismissal to protect Burisma
and Hunter Biden.
“I don’t know what Biden said to
Poroshenko,” Chumak said. “But
Shokin’s firing was a very correct
move for the country, not for Biden.”
Oleksandr Lemenov, founder of
the civil society group State Watch,
has called Ryaboshapka “the father of
the anti-corruption strategy in
Ukraine.” Lemenov is a member of
the commission examining and inter-
viewing prosecutors.
“For six months, Ryaboshapka re-
fused to use the prosecutor’s o ffice for
political purposes,” Lemenov said.
The main problem, he said, was
Zelensky’s closeness to powerful oli-
garchs. Tr ying to complete the re-
forms now is “like giving birth in a
third month of pregnancy.”
“It seems [Zelensky] lost his ability
to see the truth,” Lemenov said. “It
took nine months for Zelensky to lose
our trust.”
Ryaboshapka’s efforts began at the
top, in the prosecutor general’s office
in Kyiv.
More than half of the prosecutors
in the capital — 729 out of 1,339 —
were dismissed. Among regional
prosecutors, 780 of 3,161 have failed
so far, before the interview stage.
“It’s the most serious reform of the
prosecutor’s office in the history of
Ukraine,” Chumak said. “If only we
had had just half a year more, those
reforms would have been irrevers-
ible.”
Venediktova said Tuesday that it
was important to continue the effort.
But she also expressed concern about
staffing problems caused by the dis-
missals of so many prosecutors.
[email protected]Natalie gryvnyak contributed to this
report.Daria Kaleniuk, head of Ukraine’s
Anti-corruption Action Center, said
the moves send the message that
Zelensky “can fire a person who takes
a risk, for doing the right things, and
blame this person for inefficiency.”
“It feels that his agenda is being
built by either very non-competent
forces or very pro-oligarch and pro-
Russian forces,” Kaleniuk told The
Washington Post. “I think that it’s
just a matter of time, when pro-Rus-
sian forces and pro-oligarch forces
fully hijack the president.”
A spokeswoman for Zelensky did
not respond to questions about the
criticism of Ryaboshapka’s dismissal.
Spokeswoman Iiuliia Mendel sent an
excerpt from a Zelensky address on
March 4, in which he said he did not
influence the work of prosecutors
and called for them to work more
quickly and prosecute more people.
“For how long should Ukrainian
society expect the results in the most
resonant cases?” h e asked. “We prom-
ised citizens a victory over corrup-
tion. Now it’s not even a draw.”
Ryaboshapka’s replacement, ap-
proved by the parliament Tuesday,
disappointed anti-corruption advo-
cates. Kaleniuk called Venediktova,
head of the State Bureau of Investiga-tions, “completely unsuitable,” pre-
dicting in a Facebook post that she
would do whatever Zelensky wanted.
“Those who always say yes will
simply bring both the president and
the country to a deep, deep bottom,”
she said.
Zelensky told parliament Tuesday
that Venediktova’s professionalism
and integrity would ensure an end to
corruption and see important cases
prosecuted.
Venediktova told parliament she
would comply with the law and
ensure that the prosecution service
met international standards.
“I promise not to sell criminal
cases, not to sabotage them and not
to reinstate werewolf prosecutors,”
she said. “We need justice like air, and
we will restore it.”
She rejected accusations that she
was appointed to initiate political
prosecutions: “There is no political
persecution in Ukraine, but a thief
must be in jail.”
Zelensky boasted to President
Trump last year in the telephone call
that raised controversy for both that
Ryaboshapka would be “100 percent
my person.”
The July 25 conversation, in which
Trump asked Zelensky to launchinvestigations into his political rival
Joe Biden and his son Hunter led to
his impeachment. (He was acquitted
by the Senate.)
Trump’s pressure came at a deli-
cate time for Ukraine, as Ryaboshap-
ka and other reformers worked to
shake the country free from decades
of corrupt, incompetent governance.
Zelensky’s claim that Ryaboshapka
was 100 percent his man was damag-
ing in a nation where the prosecution
service has long been used as a
Soviet-style political tool to jail politi-
cal rivals.
Ryaboshapka, knowing that pow-
erful opponents were circling, moved
quickly to reshape the service. One of
the first things he did was fire two
deputies and the chief prosecutors in
17 of Ukraine’s regions.
As Trump pressured Zelensky, R ya-
boshapka said publicly that he saw
no evidence of criminality by Hunter
Biden. He launched audits of at least
15 investigations into the Ukrainian
gas company Burisma in the era
before Hunter Biden joined the
board.
Viktor Chumak, Ryaboshapka’s
deputy and, until Tuesday, his inter-
im successor, called his former boss
“the most successful prosecutor inWith firing, Zelensky upsets
Ukraine’s anti-graft activists
sergeI sUpINsKy/AgeNce FrANce-presse/geTTy ImAges
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky attends parliament, where allies ousted the prosecutor general on
March 5. On Tuesday, a replacement was named that seriously disappointed anti-corruption activists.