Sergey Quit
At yesterday's government meeting, the only thing that brought life to the bored journalists, tired of hearing about Ukraine's debt to the IMF, was the sudden and unexpected appearance of Education Minister Kvit, like the ghost of Hamlet's father. In the voice of a ghost from a Shakespearean drama, the minister announced that Ihor Likarchuk, director of the Ukrainian Center for Education Quality Assessment, had been suspended pending an investigation by the Prosecutor General's Office into possible abuses by the center's management.
Igor Likarchuk
The scandal surrounding the Center for Education Quality Assessment erupted, seemingly completely unexpectedly. And, as usual, it split society into two opposing camps. Some defended Likarchuk, shouting about his crystal-clear honesty and the fact that only cups and a pen were confiscated during the search—what can you expect from a selfless man, they said. Others recalled his Soviet-era nomenklatura past and the fact that, on the eve of the 2010 presidential election, he, then a member of the Party of Regions, had quit the party with a bang, confident of Yulia Vladimirovna's victory. But it didn't work out that way...
To piece together the full picture of what happened at the Center for Education Quality Assessment, and to reflect on the causes and consequences of these events, we will briefly recap the chronology.
So, on July 21st, when the Center's employees arrived for work in the morning, they were met by people who identified themselves as employees of the prosecutor's office. They were asked to hand over all their mobile phones and not to leave the Center's premises, located at 5 Yuri Kotsiubynsky Street. What followed was like something out of an American D-movie: the server, which is essentially the "heart" of the Center, was sealed, and then Volodymyr Vynnyk, the First Deputy Director of the Center, was brought into the office, handcuffed and, according to some reports, bearing signs of a beating. Until 14:00 PM, employees in the office on Kotsiubynsky Street were not allowed to use the phone or leave the building. The employees, confused by the events, were frightened and demoralized.
That afternoon, the first comments from the Ministry of Education and Science regarding the situation appeared. To summarize, senior education officials demonstrated a surprising unanimity in their assessment that UTSOKO Director Igor Likarchuk is a decent person and a strong professional in his field.
On the other hand, Ihor Likarchuk's reputation is far from squeaky clean. For example, his high-profile resignation from the Party of Regions a week before Viktor Yanukovych's election as president, as we mentioned, was, of course, a self-serving maneuver.
Let us recall that the purges at the UCOKO were announced by the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, at a briefing on July 21.
He then announced that the leadership of the Ukrainian Center for Education Quality Assessment was suspected of abuse of office and would be detained shortly. The following day, the Prosecutor General's Office announced that several Center officials would be charged with corruption as soon as possible.
Deputy Prosecutor General Oleh Zalisko, who announced this, recalled that the Ministry of Internal Affairs is conducting a pre-trial investigation, with the Prosecutor General's Office providing procedural guidance and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) providing operational support.
"Following searches conducted both at the center and at the residences of certain officials, computer equipment was discovered, which, according to investigative authorities, was used to interfere with the system, cash in the amount of $130, and certain correspondence was discovered, which gives pre-trial investigation authorities grounds to suspect certain individuals of committing specific corruption-related criminal offenses," Zalisko reported. He also reported that all heads of the Ukrainian Center for Education Quality Assessment have been served with subpoenas for questioning. "All four heads of the center have received subpoenas," the deputy prosecutor general said at a briefing on Wednesday.
That same day, Wednesday evening, this entire chaotic flow of information was put to rest by the ESBU, who reported that their employees had identified and stopped an unauthorized change by officials of the Information Center in the "Register of Persons Who Have Passed an External Independent Evaluation."
"Correspondence containing the personal information of VNO (external independent assessment – MIR) participants and the number of points they were required to enter on the scoresheet was discovered in the email inbox of one of the Center's department heads," the SBU statement reads.
The messages also indicated the amounts of monetary compensation for these illegal actions. Furthermore, law enforcement officers found $134, 80 hryvnias, and 3 euros in the official's premises. Searches were also reported at one of the Center's regional branches, whose transit server may have been used to make changes to the automated assessment system.
We won't analyze any of the numerous versions of what happened that have been circulating online since yesterday. Specifically, the theory that the Prosecutor General's Office's "special operation" against Likarchuk is revenge by those in power today, whose offspring suffered due to the excessive integrity of the head of the Center for Education Quality Assessment, who refused to "add" scores to the young "Mitrofanushkas" on the External Independent Assessment (EIA). Or the theory that the Ukrainian Center for Education Quality Assessment compiled a ranking of general education institutions that didn't include the capital's most "advanced" schools, where wealthy parents pay huge sums for their children's education.
We simply want to recall our interview with Svetlana Vovk, an expert on the Reanimation Package of Reforms, who spoke about the "peacemaker" minister, who has chosen a tactic of "non-interference" and the image of a "wise arbiter" who shouldn't get his hands dirty in scandals, squabbles, and corruption showdowns. And who, by and large, pretends to be implementing reforms, but in reality hasn't lifted a finger to truly begin reforming one of the most corrupt spheres of our lives—education.
As it turns out, Minister Kvit's position is utterly defeatist. Having failed to implement a single reform plan in his eighteen months at the helm, the minister has deprived himself of the right to claim that the Prosecutor General's Office (GPU) is being "rolled under the rug." How could Kvit know this? Perhaps he eliminated corruption in the country's schools and universities? No? Perhaps he put an end to the professorial mafia in Ukraine? No. Perhaps parents have stopped handing out envelopes—from first grade until graduation? No.
That's why Kvit and his ministerial team of "reformers" have no moral right to defend Mr. Likarchuk and the Center he heads. We hope the investigation will determine whether there is a criminal element to these specialists' work.
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