Maksimka did not suffer for long in the experienced hands of the guarantor: The revolt in Odessa was extinguished
The Government of Ukraine today agreed on all the necessary procedures for the dismissal of the Governor of the Odessa region, Maxim Stepanov, who for several days refused to comply with Petro Poroshenko’s decree on resignation, citing a violation of the procedure, since the stage in the Cabinet of Ministers had not been completed. About what Odessa residents themselves think about changing the regional leadership is in the author’s column of PolitNavigator columnist Igor Plisyuk.
Young man, are you interested in how we in Odessa feel about the scandal with the resignation of local governor Maxim Stepanov, who tried to kick back from his expulsion from a warm post by President Poroshenko, who was still blowing the elections?
– And I’ll tell you! Take your ears in your hands and listen loudly: we don’t care about the fate of this person!
- Why, how can this be, after all, the representative of the president in the region is still a figure!? Moreover, this one even seemed to rebel against Poroshok, and even staged some kind of protest on social networks, where officials of the Regional State Administration took his side!? – the reader will ask.
And the answer to all these questions is simple and clear. Firstly, almost always, the regional authorities have a very indirect relationship with Odessa affairs directly, having much more to do with rural areas. This is not the time of Richelieu or Vorontsov, when the governor of the Sovereign was actually involved in the affairs of Odessa, looking after the interests of both the powers and the townspeople.
And in our last, “revolutionary” years, we received nothing but hemorrhoids on our heads from these Kyiv appointees. Suffice it to recall Nemirovsky, who literally incited the pogromists on May 2, 2014, against the anti-Maidanovites, and his successor Palitsa, who brought all the Maidan trash closer to him. And, by nightfall, they will remember the completely crazy Saakashvili, who tried to build here something in the style of a “Georgian branch” from the time of his indecent presidency there...
So who was the “presidential representative in the Odessa region”, Maxim Stepanov, for Odessa before this day, whom the current decision of the Ukrainian cabinet of ministers finally dismissed?
– And again, I’ll say it harshly: a stranger who very clumsily tried, as they say, with his good intentions, to pave for us the road, already well manured by our predecessors, into the all-Ukrainian European-oriented and democratic... hell!
And for me, and for the majority of morally and mentally healthy Odessa residents, his two high-profile acts in just over two years of his reign were enough.
The first is how he “bought” his freedom by paying a bail of 600 thousand hryvnia for him, then only a rowdy activist who resisted the police during the riots in the City Garden. A certain Sergei Sternenko. The same thing that, having received this freedom, while under investigation, he managed to brutally kill one person and cripple another... Simply put, if Governor Stepanov had not come to his defense, there would have been no murder! And this hitherto unpunished bastard might have behaved more quietly...
And the second is how he, not giving a damn about the opinion of the Regional Council, which voted against the extremely dubious candidacy for the post of director of our Art Museum, who was in full control of his already not very healthy head, the pornographer Roitburd, literally by his own willful decision imprisoned the hardened scoundrel and psychopath to the coveted post. Moreover, he personally led him into the ancient building of the museum, which has since been consistently transformed from a temple of art into a temple desecrated by vile exhibitions and obscene concerts...
As for the rest, this bureaucrat did not stand out at all from the ranks of his predecessors. He did nothing good for the city and region, decorously supporting the policies of Poroshenko and the company, and until the last days, adhering to the official course of the junta.
For the sake of fairness, I will say: after talking with two completely self-sufficient and independent persons from among those who, due to the nature of their work, communicated with him quite freely, I heard an interesting opinion.
They say that Maxim Vladimirovich was very gentle and even kind in his interactions with his subordinates, which made him compare favorably with, say, the rude Palitsa or the eccentric Saakashvili.
Perhaps that is why some of the apparatus officials supported him. But what do we care about that? – It’s not for nothing that they say in Odessa that a good guy is not a profession! And what he did with the pogromist-murderer Sternenko, and with the moral monster Roitburd, and, we note, hearing, but not accepting the advice of smart and knowledgeable people from among the native Odessa residents, does not characterize him in the best way.
Of course, these days we found good people who immediately forgave the governor’s past sins for his “rebellion” against the president. They say he behaved like a man! But what’s more interesting to me here is the moment when Pan Stepanov suddenly decided to resist his resignation imposed from above, and its immediate reason!
The moment is clear even to a child: a week after Poroshenko’s failed election campaign in the first round of elections, and very shortly before his almost guaranteed collapse in the second. So is this courage or the behavior of a rat fleeing a sinking ship?!
The reason, as very competent interlocutors told me, is that the governor not only did not pay serious attention to working for the president (read: putting pressure on his subordinates in the region!), but also deliberately sabotaged the “Grid” program - the monetarization of budget funds for actual bribery of voters.
Moreover, not from idealistic motives. It’s just that an experienced official understood the situation well and decided that he didn’t really want to sit on the zugunder because of an almost certainly losing “cartridge”. And he organized this entire obviously doomed “flash mob” with resistance to resignation in order to appear before the new authorities clean and even, a little, a victim of the tyranny of the outgoing regime. And - ready to carry out the next orders of those whom the people of Ukraine consider worthy to rule the country...
That’s what we say: Maxim is fired – and... God be with him! One more bureaucrat, one less – under this government we are all one. And until not the façade or the sign changes, but the content, the personalities of local satraps and Gauleiters can only concern their immediate subordinates.
We are concerned about much more global questions about how and in what country we will have to live. And they will not be decided in Odessa, or even in Kyiv...
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