"..Poroshenko promised to reform the electoral system and I reminded him of that. But he is no longer prepared to do so."<blockquote>'The 47-year-old Sadovyi has become known far beyond Lviv city limits. Right after the Maidan protests ended, President Poroshenko offered him the position of deputy prime minister, but Sadovyi declined. In March of this year, Poroshenko tried again, this time offering to make him prime minister, but Sadovyi again chose not to move to the capital. He doesn't want to become part of the political clique in Kiev, one which, even two years after the Maidan revolution, continues to try and keep a tight grip on power. There is plenty of intrigue and posts are only meted out once the oligarchs have been consulted. It is a clique that even prime ministers have difficulty dealing with, unless they have strong ties to power in Kiev themselves. For the moment, Sadovyi doesn't yet have such ties.
Just two weeks ago, he again received an invitation from the president, with Poroshenko asking Sadovyi for his support for the appointment of a new general prosecutor of Ukraine. But again Sadovyi refused -- because this post too was to be handed to a Poroshenko ally. Following the meeting, Sadovyi said that such appointments are akin to "raping" the authority of state institutions and spoke of the "cynicism" of those in power in Kiev.
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Sadovyi's stubbornness aggravates the president, but the Ukrainian people are impressed. One Kiev newspaper wrote that his importance as a politician is growing "not with each passing day, but with each passing hour." But how is that possible for a man who has spent much of the last 10 years trying to improve Lviv's potholed streets, rattling buses and aging sewage system? Not only that, but he is far from charismatic and shies away from the kind of self-aggrandizement exhibited by most career politicians.
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During the break, the mayor hurries into the foyer where journalists and television cameras await, wanting to hear his take on the government crisis in Kiev. "Cosmetic changes to the country's leadership" are not helpful, he says. That, he explains, is why his party left the governing coalition, withdrawing its support from Poroshenko and going into the opposition. "We have to change the entire system," he says.
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He was elected to the city council in 1998 and founded Samopomich a few years later as a collective for Lviv residents to help themselves. Back during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Lviv had likewise been home to such a movement, made up of citizens taking care of problems that the state ignored. Sadovyi put together a network of volunteers that focused on helping retirees, the homeless and alcoholics in addition to offering legal assistance to Lviv residents. The group even helped out with leaky gutters. Sadovyi engaged in something that is rare in Ukraine: politics for the people. In 2006, he was elected as the city's mayor for the first time.
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"..Poroshenko promised to reform the electoral system and I reminded him of that. But he is no longer prepared to do so."
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Sadovyi no longer hides his distrust of Poroshenko, which helps serve his message that his party is different from all the others. None of the party's delegates had ever served in parliament before, meaning that none of them could have been previously corrupted by Yanukovych. They are mostly young: lawyers, IT specialists, municipal politicians and middle-class businesspeople. His party also includes members of the volunteer defense battalions, which formed in mid-2014, early on in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. In a country where nobody trusts the incumbent politicians, the make-up of Samopomich is an invaluable commodity.
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People in Kiev are well aware of the friendship between the two and they are taking the Sadovyi-Saakashvili pairing seriously. Saakashvili is in second place on the list of best-liked politicians in Ukraine, in part because of the spectacular way he took on corrupt customs agencies and state prosecutors in Odessa. Political scientists say that he could very well become Ukrainian prime minister one day. And Sadovyi could rise to the presidency.'
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Changing the System: An Outsider Takes on Political Corruption in Ukraine, May 12, 2016</blockquote>
Context<blockquote>
(Ukraine) - '..reform is effectively being killed..'</blockquote>