Crimean authorities’ conflict goes to court
Last week President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine met all leaders of the Crimean Autonomous Republic, namely, Anatoly Korniychuk, the President’s representative; Serhiy Kunitsyn, head of government; and Leonid Hrach, Speaker of parliament. But, oddly enough, they gave entirely different accounts of these meetings, when they returned to the Crimea (the autonomous republic’s residents first of all wanted to know the President’s stand on government resignation, which was in fact the reason why Mr. Hrach wanted to meet the President). Mr. Korniychuk told journalists that the meeting “discussed the relationship between the two branches of power in the autonomous republic. President Kuchma stressed again that the Crimean government is viable and functions normally, so there are no grounds for its resignation.” Mr. Kunitsyn, answering the same question at the airport of Simferopol, said the President had underlined his previous viewpoint: the Crimean government is doing its job well, and, as long as this situation prevails, he cannot approve its resignation. However, Mr. Hrach told Chornomorska Television and Radio Company listeners that “the government is now in a state of resignation,” making it clear the President adheres to precisely this point of view.
These statements of the Crimean leaders have finally baffled the public because both assertions cannot be true simultaneously, which means one of the leaders is just plain lying. Why he needs this still remains a mystery.
Nonetheless, Mr. Kunitsyn told journalists that, in view of Mr. Hrach’s stubbornness, he and another seven government members (non-Communists) had filed a complaint in the Simferopol Central Court over the Crimean Verkhovna Rada’s breach of employment legislation and illegal dismissal. The court accepted the complaint and duly notified Verkhovna Rada Speaker Leonid Hrach that under part 4, Article 248, Civil Procedural Code of Ukraine, an illegally-taken appeal ruling ceases to be valid on the day of filing such a complaint pending the final court decision on this matter. This means that, since the government resignation decision was made in contravention of the law, as the President’s chief of staff, Volodymyr Lytvyn, wrote to Mr. Hrach in a letter never made public in the Crimea, this decision is also invalid because it was suspended by the Simferopol Central Court. Mr. Kunitsyn also said that the seven Communist ministers who never submitted any formal notice must be really “in a state of resignation,” but he, exercising his right as head of government, had lodged on his own a petition to parliament, asking to satisfy their oral, but unambiguous, wish for resignation.
