President Favors Immunity for Volkov but Opposes it for Lawmakers

Those who expected the President to play to the crowd by taking unusual steps and displaying original thinking (for instance, all are equal before the law, and the commission will look into this), have again found their expectations dashed. Leonid Kuchma is predictable as always, clinging to standards and working unimaginatively. UNIAN reports he said at a Zaporizhzhia press conference that all executive bodies had been instructed not to cooperate with the parliamentary commissions: "The executive branch views them as nonexistent." And in general, according to the President, an ad hoc investigatory commission should act by law, but Parliament deliberately fails to pass a law on investigating commissions. Proceeding from this logic (no law, no work), the President should have let his administration go on indefinite leave. Or, at worst, dissolve his Domestic Policy Coordinating Council, which Mr. Volkov heads at Mr. Kuchma's behest. But this is not the main thing.

What the President stressed in front of the whole country is that he will not let Parliament stick its collective nose into Mr. Volkov's affairs in particular and into family affairs in general. The unique Lazarenko case is only a showpiece whipping of apostates: either sin with the boss or oppose him behind bars!

Thus, well before the investigative commission got down to work, the President confirmed by his actions and statements that it could have "dug out" something, so the only way to prevent it from doing so is to cover his tracks by isolating the executive branch from contact with the inquisitive legislators. The President is right in concluding that the investigative commission is being used "for political struggle against political opponents." It would only be strange if things were different.

In some very democratic and civilized countries, this purpose is served by washing the dirty linen in public and have the whole country suddenly look straight into the sun of their president's vitality. This is, of course, excessive, but in our case the main question seems to remain in the shade of the President's indignation over the parliamentary commission: are there illegal accounts or not? Is the President surrounded by inveterate law-breakers (or, as the Prosecutor-General said about the yet to be indicted Lazarenko, "criminals"), or are they all crystal clean?

Mr. Kuchma said in Zaporizhzhia the he deeply respects deputies of all levels, but adding, "However, we also know of many criminal deputies who cover themselves with their parliamentary status." This was the President's reaction to the Verkhovna Rada attempt to restore deputies' immunity on the local level. We also know them, but there is still one more category: those covered by power umbrellas.

The example of the Crimea, which made media headlines as a proof of successfully combating crime after lifting immunity, was central at a police conference attended by the President and is still being broadcast. If in the Crimea, especially in Simferopol and Kerch, whole mobs and brigades of criminal groupings found shelter in the city councils, this raises a question: how did all those gentleman thieves get there en masse? Their life stories were common knowledge, I myself wrote about them. But while Voronok ("Little Raven") might kick open the door to Crimean Premier Franchuk's office even before being elected a deputy, while at the premier's home police and security chiefs had to sit at the same table with Raven and various of his consorts, what does it have to do with legislative immunity? While Kerch was Franchuk's fief and Franchuk was the father of the President's daughter's husband, and Kerch was held by Little Raven's people, what is the point of talking? The point is that, after starting to mop up Yalta during the parliamentary election campaign, NDP and the Pustovoitenko government overcame there the new economic policy structures controlled by Volkov and connected with a certain grouping. This period coincided with the struggle of Hrach against Franchuk for the Crimea. And only after the Crimean premier was toppled and elected to the Ukrainian Parliament did his Kerch, which had been his cadre powerhouse, crumble. It happened not in winter, when immunity was lifted, but six month later. Let us recall how many high-sounding statements Hrach made about the so-called criminal revolution before we heard a series of sensational reports about the "quantitative" law enforcement successes again in Kerch. Somehow I wonder how many requests were sent by these agencies to the Simferopol and Kerch city councils to cancel the immunity of locally elected criminals when Franchuk was in office?

Our President is very worried that the parliamentary attempt of "potential presidential candidates to score points" might lead to the loss of these points "in the eyes of the ordinary people who will go to vote on October 31." Mr. Kuchma does not seem to take into account that, just like he, his opponent, the Speaker who raised the issue of restoring immunity, is betting on those who "organize" voting, rather than the "ordinary people who will go to vote." Because this is the country we have: "it does not matter how they vote, what matters is how they count the votes." This, however, is like beating one's head against a wall.