Legislative Session Smacks of Presidential Campaign

According to Speaker Tkachenko, one of the contenders will have to defend his parliamentary immunity early this month. As for Pavlo Lazarenko, he has once again promised to make public some extremely scandalous documents relating to his opponents. Perhaps he will. Once back from Strasbourg, he said "quite frankly" that he would not mind discussing a single candidate with the Left, and that throwing him to the wolves would be indecent on the part of his comrades-in-arms. It is also true that there are quite a few among the Right who would regard stripping parliamentary immunity an extremely unwelcome precedent.

The Right will be subject to a continuous process of redistribution. Hanna Antonieva is the only Democratic Party member who seems resolved to set up a faction of her own. Oleksandr Volkov (independent) says she has applied for admission to his Regional Rebirth faction. Mr. Kuchma's faithful associate further alleges that among the other new members are NDP natural gas lords, several Hromada members, and even the Permanent Presidential Representative Roman Bezsmertny (32 Deputies in all). Due to such region variation, it is hard to say how exactly the creation of this faction agrees with the Verkhovna Rada's Standing Orders. The fact remains that the Constitutional Court has not as yet ruled on whether to allow deputy groups or whether every faction must be based on a certain political party. And no presidential party has been registered with the Ministry of Justice. In a word, NDP may have to fight on three fronts from now on: against the Left, United Social Democrats, and the Regions.

Rukh is still NDP's more or less stable partner. In some regions local National Democratic organizations even join the bloc of Rukh with Reforms and Order bloc, yet the Rukh faction's conflict continues to aggravate. After Vyacheslav Chornovil refused to preside over the faction's sitting 33 Rukh lawmakers appointed Heorhy Filipchuk Coordinator (instead of Vyacheslav Koval) and Yuri Kostenko as the faction's second in command, also changing its bylaws. The party leader declined to approve these resolutions. Almost simultaneously Chornovil's faithful heads of 13 (out of 26) oblast organizations wrote a letter, demanding that "proper measures be taken with regard to certain deputies to party functionaries."

Rumor has it that Rukh members brought rotten eggs before the end of the previous session in case the Speaker again raises the matter of joining the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly. Due to technical reasons the planned scandal was postponed until the current session. In fact, Speaker Tkachenko went even further than the IA proposal, declaring that Ukraine may shortly accede to the Russian-Belarusian Union.

Later, he added that what he actually had in mind was economic integration. It was at this point that the Speaker found himself in the same boat with the President who, after meeting Yevgeny Primakov, declared that he proceeds "completely from the necessity of economic integration with Russia," and that "there certainly should be indications that we are oriented toward such cooperation." Mr. Kuchma even assumed that he would recommend Parliament ratify the Black Sea Accords. In this sense the point is not whether Parliament will heed his recommendations, but what will happen to that much vaunted "multidirectional" nature of the Ukrainian foreign policy, and what positions will be left to surrender to Ukraine's number one strategic partner? If this be the case, those Russian politicians that urged the Senators to ratify the Grand Treaty or else Ukraine will not ratify the Black Sea instruments will have no more arguments to back Ukraine's stand (that is if there is a stand). And the Left is planning the final blow to the multi-vector game when Verkhovna Rada debates the NATO agreements in camera, as arranged. Previous parliamentary deliberations of NATO projects like Sea Breeze show there are not too many European integration opponents there. Vyacheslav Kyrylenko of Rukh told The Day that the forthcoming procedures will allow the Right only to voice their views. Even though NATO opponents are not likely to constitute a majority, formulation is the most important thing. By torpedoing these bills the Left will reap yet another trump. Another thing is that, despite the NATO accords being unratified, joint military exercises are carried out, which is a real thorn in the Left's side.

It would be interesting to trace the route followed by the bills passed by Parliament from the legislature to the Presidential Administration. Thus, the presidential election law got lost and could be found only after two weeks and the one on the Ukrainian capital was slightly altered before reaching its destination (according to Messrs. Lavrynovych and Kosakivsky). The Presidential Press Service has already denied all such accusations. Former Deputy Speaker Viktor Musiyaka admitted that similar things happened with the previous Verkhovna Rada, which means that this time one will have to look for the proverbial black cat in Parliament for too much smoke has appeared to deny there is a fire somewhere.

The PACE session also did nothing to ease the Solons' headache. Ukraine received final warning that if nothing happens about meeting commitments by summer this country will be expelled. Something has to be done about the capital punishment. The trial of serial murderer Anatoly Onopriyenko in Zhytomyr is still ongoing and it would be suicide for any political force to advocate outlawing death sentences. A middle course seems to have been found, however. It would suffice to request that the Constitutional Court ascertain whether the clauses of the Criminal Code providing for death sentences conform to man's constitutional right to live, whereupon the court would simply nullify them, safely insulated from the need to run for election.

Given this surfeit of political topics, the economy can rest awhile, although the executive has made it clear that they are prepared Ukrtelekom before the elections in any manner possible, even by dumping its blocs of shares on the stock exchange, without looking for any strategic investor. In the meantime the parliamentary Telekom lobby is actively negotiating with numerous factions, so that the privatization process benefits the industry, not the budget.