PARLIAMENT VS. GOVERNMENT: ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM IN A FREE ZONE

First Vice Premier Yuri Yekhanurov, addressing Verkhovna Rada on September 12, said that the central executive bodies had practically completed the first stage of their structural reorganization. “This has made it possible to reduce the number of executive branch civil servants 89,000 to 47,000. 16,000 of them have been let go this year alone,” he said. The Vice Premier also noted that the government does not think that reform should be limited only to administrative staff cuts. However, while debating his report, People’s Deputies spoke precisely about this limitation, demanding “more systematic work” from the government.

“In the course of administrative reform, the same civil servants go around a circle, only renaming their offices,” Vitaly Kononov, the Green faction leader, believes.

“Ukraine does not have the classical idea of administrative reform. The reform was in fact reduced to the President signing a decree on slimming down the ministries and other agencies. This was a genuine step toward administrative reform. From then to now, I have seen no government actions that I could identify with the idea of administrative reform. For it’s not just about cutting bureaucrats. This kind of reduction also existed under the Soviet regime,” People’s Deputy Oleksandr Riabchenko told The Day. “Administrative reform should entail radical changes in government functions. But some actions of the government indicate the opposite. For example, the energy market reform cannot be considered administrative reform because it entails intensified administrative coercion. And this automatically leads to increasing the number of bureaucrats. Everything being done now is a far cry from a real administrative reform. The essence, role, and methods of rule by the authorities are still too excessive and all-encompassing.”

This cabinet’s first government day in a new political season ended without the expected heated passions and with an overtly indifferent attitude of the majority concerning the issues under discussion, including those of special economic zones which the IMF demands be liquidated. Only the Left displayed their traditional schoolboy Sitzfleisch. In all probability, the administrative reform and the way special economic zone laws are being applied are not the key points for our state and government-parliament relations. The deputies may be bracing themselves to hear Vice Premier Yuliya Tymoshenko on the situation in the fuel-and-energy complex (FEC) to be delivered next week as requested by the Regional Revival faction. It is known that many think the unsatisfactory state of affairs in the FEC could the reason why the current government crisis has worsened, despite numerous denials, and led to changes in the cabinet.

The FEC hearings will not be the only test, if a test at all, for the government: at worst, there will be a wave of rumors about a candidate to replace Mrs. Tymoshenko. What can really put the government, the President, and parliament at odds with one another is the 2001 budget, for this document, by force of the nature of the current political situation in Ukraine, could eventually become not only more laden with compromise but also more realistic than the 2000 budget.

As was reported by television and Interfax-Ukraine, the President has just criticized the principle of internal budgetary relationships incorporated in the new draft budget. According to this principle, oblast governors are to be in fact deprived of their levers of influence on cities and districts, Interfax-Ukraine quotes Oleksandr Turchynov, chairman of the parliament’s budget committee, as saying. Under the Constitution, Mr. Turchynov believes, no budgetary functions are bestowed on governors and oblast councils and “there cannot be 27 ministries of finance and a system whereby the Constitution, local government, oblast councils, and governors are all kept separate.” The interbudget pattern, Mr. Turchynov claims, has been taken from the code Verkhovna Rada has passed in the second reading. The governors, of course, categorically opposed the budget reform, and Mr. Turchynov’s argument, in his words, “found no support,” because the President “saw a political implication in it: we supposedly want to play to the regions on the eve of parliamentary elections to get more regional votes,” the lawmaker said. The situation is further complicated by the fact that nobody can promise that the Fatherland faction, which Mr. Turchynov represents, will remain part of the parliamentary majority should Ms. Tymoshenko really be dismissed or that it will continue to exist at all: after all, former Prosecutor General Oleh Lytvak has already quit it.

The pro-presidential Verkhovna Rada majority still has less than the 300 votes needed to amend the Constitution in compliance with the April referendum results. This is why any serious conflict of interests between the Presidential Administration and parliament during the budget debate is unlikely. All the government really has to do in this case is to show proof that it really intends to carry out a real administrative reform, is really prepared to take due account of all state requirements in the draft budget, and is indeed a government of “reforms for prosperity.”