Catching a Black Cat in a Dark Room
The April 9 parliamentary hearings, Reform of the Political System in Ukraine: the Purpose and Conceptual Principles of Constitutional Changes, showed that the supposed participants in the dialog over the political reform are rather far from the constructive spirit called for by the president. Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn’s advice to avoid “subjective emotional upsurges as well as party-based and corporate approaches” was rejected: the tone of the speeches and the rhetoric of opposition members did not really differ from those of a street corner rally. Again, a certain part of the people’s deputies displayed an absence of elementary, let alone political, culture: one of the co-reporters, First Vice Speaker Hennady Vasyliev, was listened to extremely inattentively, Minister of Justice Oleksandr Lavrynovych was in fact not allowed to speak, while opposition speakers were encouraged with loud applause.
Against this background, the attempts of some representatives of the Nine (Mykola Onyshchuk, Labor Ukraine and Progress and Order Party faction; Valery Pustovoitenko, NDP; etc.) to seek ways to “achieve a public compromise” were not very successful. This occurred perhaps because, as co-chairman of the parliamentary ad hoc commission Vasyliev pointed out, the factions and groups failed to assume a common attitude toward the presidential version of the Constitutional changes, although they all rejected the idea of a bicameral parliament.
The second co-reporter, Socialist Party faction leader Oleksandr Moroz, said bluntly that the head of state’s proposals were “diametrically opposed” to those drawn up by the peoples’ deputies. The president’s key idea — the formation of a sound system of government — as well as the instrument to reach this goal — the parliamentary-presidential model — are quite appealing to Mr. Moroz. However, the suggested “technology” of implementing these initiatives inspires apprehension in the Socialist leader. In his opinion, a compromise is possible only over the replacement of a mixed electoral system by the proportional representation model. And what Mr. Moroz called the most dangerous innovation is the adoption of laws through referendums. This, in his view, is like holding a nationwide debate about the operating instructions for a computer that the majority of the population never has and will never see.
The presidential bill On Introducing Changes to the Constitution of Ukraine was defended by Oleksandr Zadorozhny, the chief executive’s permanent representative in the parliament. Noting that the presidential draft law does not lay any claim to being gospel truth (this is why it is being put to a nationwide debate), Mr. Zadorozhny called on his colleagues to get away from personalities and “not to look for a black cat in a dark room, because it’s not there.” On the other hand, Mr. Lavrynovych tried hard to persuade the skeptics that the head of state’s proposals are really being discussed by the public. The minister said that, as of last Tuesday, the Ministry of Justice had received 434 letters and telegrams from organizations (including 21 from party cells) as well as individuals. The greatest number of materials were sent, according to Mr. Lavrynovych, from Chernivtsi, Kyiv, Poltava, Sumy, Luhansk, and Rivne oblasts. A considerable number of suggestions are about the setting of additional requirements for prospective people’s deputies of Ukraine, such as obligatory knowledge of the official language, higher education, etc., as well as about distribution of powers between the two chambers and the idea of a bicameral parliament in general. Many letters suggest that the number of parliament members be reduced, with figures varying but in any case being lower than the present number.
The greatest success with the audience was Viktor Yushchenko. His speechwriters had done a good job: Our Ukraine leader’s speech was well-structured in form and clearly radical in content (by contrast, incidentally, with his own convoluted improvisations in press interviews and in parliamentary aisles). Above all, Mr. Yushchenko emphasized that the political reform could only be carried out if the key question — the question of trust — was answered: the reform initiators must have a moral right to this and a popular “vote of confidence.” The OU leader also “exposed” the leadership’s “true intentions” — “prolonging their illegally-obtained powers” — and categorically opposed all the presidential initiatives. In Mr. Yushchenko’s opinion, Ukraine does need a political reform, but “what must be replaced is the system of government, not the Constitution” (thunderous applause). Simultaneously, the Our Ukraine leader’s harangue abounded in overtly crowd pleasing phrases and such ostensibly “folksy” expressions as “Dear government, so much fooling the people!... A political reform is as vital as oxygen because the Ukrainian system of government is in fact neither democratic nor responsible; we have an authoritarian regime... Why don’t we establish democracy instead of grazing a goat over the parliament?... One way or another, it was Yushchenko this time, not Petro Symonenko or even Yuliya Tymoshenko, who won the laurels as chief critic of the regime. Although the two latter also accused the leadership of trying to put off the presidential elections, they could not outdo the man of the hour.
What is worse is that the call of Mykola Kruhlov (Regions of Ukraine faction) — “let us heed each other and our electorate and make an agreed-upon decision” — remained a voice in the wilderness.
