ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM: Some Bureaucrats Are Cut, Period
“ Now we cannot say that the number of Ukrainian bureaucrats exceeds the world standard,” First Deputy Premier Yuri Yekhanurov said at the round table on Administrative Reform in Ukraine held in line with the Ukrainian market reform educational program. He said so because he was convinced by World Bank expert findings reading that the number of Ukrainian bureaucrats per capita “is considerably lower than in other countries.” Bureaucratic staff reductions took place everywhere, but even in the course of the pink slip campaign reduction quotas had to be altered at certain ministries and agencies, because, in the words of Mr. Yekhanurov, “They overdid it with the original quotas.”
It appears a kind of line has been drawn under the central bureaucratic staff reductions stage of the administrative reform. Now is the time to deal with effective methods and structure of management. Since similar reformist actions would inevitably reach this stage, people have come to believe that every bureaucratic staff reduction ends in that staff’s increase. One can only hope that this does not apply to the First Deputy Premier’s initiative whereby “strategic planning divisions” are now attached to every ministry and every minister receives another couple of deputies, one “for work with Parliament” (reminding one of the Soviet Army’s politruk [successor to the Red Army commissar]) and the other one “for work with the apparatus.” Naturally, it would be vulgar to perceive the administrative reform as just so many bureaucrats getting the pink slip — even if the current campaign ends on this note. The key to optimizing the state administration was to be the bill On the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. The three-year saga of failed attempts to reach a compromise on it serves as a fresh impetus to the process of enactment. Those that remember its first version by heart can only guess what happened to the bill passed by Parliament or the President’s remarks accompanying his veto that were recalled in keeping with some mysterious procedures. Yet searching for the document is no longer urgent, because President Kuchma submitted his own Cabinet bill to Verkhovna Rada last Monday, revised jointly with the government and allowing for the administrative reform currently underway.
People’s Deputy Ihor Koliushko, a veteran opponent of the government concept and one of those who worked on the law that vanished, believes the bill is an altogether different document:
“It has a number of nuances, steering a middle course between different stands, yet the main divisive issues are no longer in the text of the bill. Without them the new law will not solve the tasks assigned it, nor will it become the legal basis of administrative reform. When enacted, it will make it possible to change actually nothing, while making it possible to report success to the IMF which demands a law on the Cabinet. But the IMF has in mind the bill originally passed by Parliament and now they will show the IMF a different law, restated and hastily enacted.”
Administrative reform is not destined to be carried out quickly, because it contains a basic conflict of authority with regard to the key aspects — the status and formation of the Cabinet and its taking office — a conflict the Cabinet wants but is unable to settle and Bankova Street can settle but does not want to. Apparently, because the problem is concealed behind the facade of administrative reform, this reform looks inconsistent. Mr. Koliushko believes that it should have been started with the Cabinet law and those relating to other central authorities, a new law on civil service. After that the functional load of some official body or another should have been determined, adjusting their staff and subsidies. In reality, it happened the other way around. Ministerial staff and financing reductions first and then the remaining bureaucrats were told what they could do, and finally a law was enacted, allowing for the existing realities. Ukraine’s administrative reform relies on the trial-and-error method, with special thanks to the IMF initiating all those big shifts, leaving our bureaucrats trying to figure out how to live daily with those big shifts, what to do next, and when, by some miracle, will such curtailed staff turn into a quality state administrative structure. Yet the IMF recipes are not that specific. Thus once again the administrative reform has its beginning, yet no one knows what the end will be like.
