Oversight and Responsibility

I often take pride in the things published by this paper, with which I have the honor to be associated. One such occasion was the interview granted us by Valentyn Symonenko, head of the Accounting Chamber of Verkhovna Rada. A direct counterpart of the US Congressional Budget Office, this body has the thankless task of seeing how taxpayers’ money is spent, often misspent, and trying to blow the whistle on idiocy and skullduggery. It is an agency trying to supplant opacity with transparency. Since I live here and pay taxes even without citizenship, I have a vital interest in the working of this body.

The truth of the matter is that the Ukrainian Constitution differs from its American counterpart in one significant respect: the US government can spend money only for a specific purpose defined by law in the form of an appropriation. Ukraine’s law gives the government an omnibus budget where you can take money from, say, the Innovation Fund or Pension Fund to pay wages to the enlisted men of the Armed Forces. Of course, the young men and women who are prepared to die for the defense of their country need to get their pay on time, but that is not the point. The point is accountability, of being certain that the money goes where the political process has determined and not somewhere else. In a country where anyone who gets up early enough to see little old ladies and gentlemen rummaging through garbage cans to find enough empty beer bottles to buy their daily bread, accountability needs to be the first priority of the political process. Valentyn Symonenko is trying to make it that way, and it makes one proud to see that this country has such healthy forces. There is much to be criticized in Ukraine, and I have more than one time been in the forefront of the critics, but when there is something or someone to be praised, I am proud and privileged to lead the parade. People need to know how their money is spent. Someone trying to do that is the highest of patriots.