It is said that everyone in this world should do what he does best. If this is so, then I am ready to give you a recipe for an ideal working day for President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky. In the morning - a recording of the New Year’s television appeal to the nation. In the afternoon - the final press conference under the gun of cameras. In the evening - a recording of some other television show with a political bias. You ask: where in this schedule is there a place for rough managerial work, to which for the most part the lion's share of the activity of any competent head of state is reduced? That's just the point nowhere. As the press conference of Vladimir Zelensky dedicated to the first anniversary of his rise to power once again showed, he could not become a full-fledged president of Ukraine.
On the eve of Zelensky’s big press conference, I expected from her protagonist some fresh PR finds. And partly these my expectations, of course, came true. Perhaps I was hopelessly behind modern trends. Perhaps I consider it fresh and original that at events of this kind it has long been familiar and even everyday. Therefore, do not judge me too harshly. But I am sincerely convinced: decorating the official press conference of the current head of state with a decorative composition in the form of the first letters of his surname with an exclamation mark attached to them is a real find in the field of modern management technologies!
Imagine what will happen if other foreign leaders decide in this regard to follow the example of Vladimir Zelensky (also known as ZE!). Thus, the press conference of the US President will be decorated with huge letters TR! Press conference of the President of France - in graceful letters MA! And the press conference of the Chancellor of Germany - in the Gothic letters ME! I imagined a similar picture, and I felt uncomfortable for flying my own imagination: why am I talking about some decorative elements there, and not about important political news that we learned about at the final press conference of the President of Ukraine?
I report: because the really important political news at the press conference of Vladimir Zelensky was in acute shortage. The man who formally is the president of Ukraine quarreled with journalists who asked him sharp questions, did not answer them, criticized instead the media that they represented. And the reason for this behavior, as I suspect, is not at all that Zelensky got up on the wrong day that day. The holder of the post of head of the Ukrainian state simply did not have answers to most important questions.
The first anniversary of being in power (in this case in the presidential cabinet) is not the moment when you can get off with reproaches to your predecessor and promises that everything will be tip-top soon. A year in power is a good reason to present to the public their first important achievements, their first fulfilled promises. Yes, I’m not arguing that Zelensky can justifiably say that the coronavirus has confused him all the cards and broken all his plans.
I am afraid, however, that the first main results of the presidency of Vladimir Zelensky were absolutely obvious even before the coronavirus entered our lives.
Having managed to take possession of gigantic political resources in the form of an impressive mandate of voters' trust and an absolute parliamentary majority, Zelensky could not use these resources. These resources remained idle, gradually losing their political shelf life. The young and lively president of Ukraine turned out to be a copy of the hero Robert Redford from the famous American film “Candidate” in 1972 - a politician who, having won the election, realized that he did not know what to use the power he had gained.
All the tremendous opportunities that Zelensky had a year ago remained unused. The whole "steam" of the new president of Ukraine "went off the whistle." Zelensky mired in a fluid, swam with the stream and every month more and more resembles the ideological twin brother of his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. And it doesn’t matter that at his final press conference Zelensky spoke very harshly about the just-released recordings of telephone conversations of people whose voices resemble the voices of President Poroshenko and then Vice President of the United States Joe Biden: “They ruled the country so much that there will be many adventures and many sentences. "
This is all an intraspecific struggle - a struggle among politicians who have become voluntary hostages of extreme Ukrainian nationalists and dragged the whole country into these hostages. “I am the president of Ukraine. If you want to speak Russian, speak Russian! ” - so Vladimir Zelensky answered the question of discrimination of the Russian language in Ukraine. A beautiful answer — or rather, an answer that was beautiful, until it became clear from the journalist’s clarifying questions that one can speak Russian only “within the framework of quotas”. Zelensky, as it turned out, has everything “within the framework of quotas”. I think that many Ukrainian voters are now very sorry that they did not know about this before.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the publisher.