“This is not a game of politics, but a gamble on the country’s life”

Ukraine’s President Leonid Kuchma has reiterated that failure to implement the constitutional reform will adversely affect the country’s life. “I’m certain that, first, if we fail to implement the reform, the next president won’t do this either, and, second, unless we do this we will face hard times,” he said, addressing a business forum of Ukrainian, Serbian, and Montenegrin business circles in Kyiv last Wednesday. “Today this is not a game of politics, but a gamble on the country’s life,” Interfax Ukraine quotes the president as saying. As he put it, for Ukraine to develop further we must ensure stability, in particular the system of power. The president censured the opponents of the constitutional reform. “When the opponents of this process try to lead somebody astray, this is immoral,” President Kuchma said, adding that at the last presidential elections all political forces advocated a parliamentary-presidential model. The president stressed that in proposing the political reform he “didn’t invent anything.” “Judging from my personal experience as a president, I’m certain that we can’t continue like this. We will make no progress, and there will be constant discord, not only in politics,” he said. According to the president, the proposed model of Ukrainian power system exists in many European countries. He stressed the importance of granting the head of state the right to dissolve the parliament in case if the majority collapses. “People don’t need such a parliament today,” he said.

To quote Pres. Kuchma, granting the president this right does not necessarily mean that he will exercise it. For this is needed to ensure the parliament’s effective work. “Today there is no leverage of influencing the parliament whatsoever,” he stated.

The president referred to the existing parliamentary majority as situational, stating that it still yields some positive results. Simultaneously, he pointed up the fact that the deputies often break rank. “Just look at this Brownian movement in the parliament: today [a deputy] is in one faction, next day in another. Some made a living out of it,” the head of state said, adding that this is “totally immoral.”