Slightly more than a year is left to the next presidential elections.
The experience of pushing the election bill through Parliament shows that
the time is ripe to consider the rules by which the next Chief Executive
will take office.
THE OLD LAW
The existing presidential election law was enacted July 5, 1991, before
Ukraine's independence, let alone the new Constitution. In other words,
it is outdated and does not correspond to the Fundamental Law. To begin
with, the clause saying that the Verkhovna Rada appoints the next election
date makes no sense because the Constitution has it in black and white
that the President is to be elected on the last Sunday of October of the
current President's fifth year in office.
Besides, the Constitution does not debar convicts from voting, meaning
that Article 2 of the law On Presidential Elections is unconstitutional.
Article 36 of the Constitution reads that all citizens'associations
are equal before the law. The old law discriminates against political parties,
vesting the right to nominate a presidential candidate only in political
associations with at least 1,000 members. It further reads that the Verkhovna
Rada Presidium is to approve the campaign's fund. But there is no Presidium,
is there?
Likewise, the Central Election Committee's right to explain how to apply
the election law and initiate legislation, as well as the Parliament's
right to interpret the election law, do not conform to the Constitution.
The Constitutional Court has made it clear that a resolution passed
by an election committee can be appealed to a court of law, whereas the
old law says it can be appealed only to a higher-standing election committee.
Finally, the old law often refers to the law on the election of people's
deputies. Another discarded law. Thus, pre-term voting procedures during
a presidential campaign are determined by the law On the Elections of People's
Deputies and it no longer stipulates them.
Last but not least, there are clearly irrelevant clauses, like the one
about nomination at a party convention 60-90 days prior to the election
date. Practice shows that by then the campaign is well underway.
Naturally, new projects are developed and the authors strive to correct
the above and other discrepancies. Three such projects have been formally
registered: (a) Hromada's which is signed by Oleksandr Turchynov, Vitaly
Shevchenko, and Oleksandr Lavrynovych. Others are likely to appear before
long.
HROMADA PROJECT
Unlike the currently effective law (or Lavrynovych's project), it envisages
party nomination combined with self-nomination, although each candidate
will have to collect a million, rather than 100,000 signatures. According
to Turchynov, Hromada thus tries to prevent repetition of the Presidential
Administration force-scattering maneuver performed in the last elections.
Incidentally, Yevhen Marchuk predicts that if the elections are held under
the current law, the number of candidates may approach 30.
As was to be expected, Hromada's trump is restricting PA's abuses of
office. The project clearly stipulates the number of hours and times each
candidate can have on the air, where the budget comes from and how it is
expended. Still, the authors cannot be branded as utopians. Oleksandr Turchynov
assured The Day, "We are naive to believe that the President in
office can be restricted in using his privileges when running for another
term."
VITALY SHEVCHENKO'S PROJECT
His project is the most sophisticated. In the first place, it has clauses
deferred to later dates (e.g., the official electoral register to take
effect in 2001) and a number of articles demanding changes in the Constitution
(e.g., a candidate's age of up to 65 and barring servicemen from nomination).
The ballots are to be allocated ordinal numbers. Vitaly Shevchenko explained
to The Day's Oksana Panchenko that these procedures will cost less
than a recount when detecting falsifications. He also sounded a little
naive. For example, everything stated by representatives of the powers
that be present at election committee sittings must be entered in the minutes,
President-appointed officials cannot take part in the campaign (including
the Information Minister, no doubt - V.Ya.), and the President's activities
must be covered only by news bulletins. (Being a journalist, Mr. Shevchenko
describes the media coverage procedures at special length and depth.)
LAVRYNOVYCH'S PROJECT
The author was among the first Ukrainians to have received a course
of training in election law at the Brooklyn Institute and U.S. Congress,
yet his project envisages no revolutionary changes. Apart from emphasizing
conformity to the Constitution, he proposes electoral principles
already laid down in the law on elections to the Verkhovna Rada: positive
vote (by writing a plus, not crossing out the name), canceling the turnout
margin below which the elections are nullified, etc. As for nomination
being restricted to the parties only, Mr. Lavrynovych does not consider
this to impede the rights of the nonaffiliated candidates. He believes
that the President must rely on a certain political force to keep his political
views stable.
This project does not provide for invalidating elections. The author
holds that, if and when falsifications are discovered, they must be corrected
and the guilty parties punished. Incidentally, other non-Soviet countries
do not have invalidation clauses either.
PROSPECTS
The Verkhovna Rada will, of course, order all these projects into a
single draft. In fact, the authors have nothing against reasonable corrections
and borrowings from other documents so long as they serve to improve the
overall idea. Vitaly Shevchenko would like to have a special coordinating
group, since the documents thus submitted may be "evened up" in the course
of drawn-out party battles. Besides, NDP and other pro-President factions
are likely to slow down the bill's passage. Mr. Turchynov thinks that passing
it shortly before the start of the presidential campaign will pave the
way for extensive administrative pressure during the elections. However,
even if the bill is passed on time, Mr. Lavrynovych feels sure that the
President will veto it if his (Lavrynovych's) proposals, concerning party-only
nomination and no invalidation clause, are incorporated.
It is possible that the next elections will be held under the old law.
In this case Clause 1 of Transition Clauses of the Constitution will become
applicable - in other words, the old law will be effective inasmuch as
it does not contradict the Constitution, meaning that everybody will have
to wait for the Constitutional Court's adjudication, which is controversial
in itself and is not likely to add to the elections'legitimacy or make
the attendant political situation stable or clear.






