A “road map” for impassible roads
The government crisis is dragging out dangerously: last Friday parliament adjourned for a winter recess without meeting the president halfway. The 9th session, the last one of the 4th-convocation Verkhovna Rada, will convene on Feb. 7.
Despite President Yushchenko’s repeated appeals, the participants of last Friday’s meeting of the conciliation board of factions and groups did not seem even to be trying to find ways to achieve harmony with the executive branch. The participants of the meeting did not discuss such matters as the swearing-in of Constitutional Court judges, reconsidering the cabinet dismissal, and other issues concerning the prerequisites for reconciliation proposed by the head of state.
Shortly before the adjournment, Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn again donned his favorite image of peacemaker. (This time it looked particularly artificial because the memories of the cabinet’s dismissal, in which Lytvyn played an active role, are still fresh.) Lytvyn announced that he submitted some proposals - a “road map” (our politicians are quick to learn terminology rather than civilized rules of the game), which can help set up an expert commission in order “to develop a general interpretation of the Constitution’s new provisions” so that all the negotiators can “speak the same language.” Wouldn’t it be simpler first to allow the Constitutional Court to work normally, or have the MPs forgotten that the very mission of this court is to interpret the Constitution?
In general, the legislators certainly have the right not to trust the Cabinet of Ministers. They can probably even suspect the Constitutional Court of nefarious actions. Nevertheless they must do their utmost, without any ultimatums, to ensure that the Constitutional Court of their country can function normally. After all, this is the work for which they are generously paid and for which their voters engaged them, a fact that the national political class prefers to recall as seldom as possible.
Moreover, the speaker thinks it necessary, at least in public, to swear in the Constitutional Court judges and elect new ones according to the parliamentary quota. His “road map” also includes the “partial reshuffling of government ministers” and “some corrections” to the Verkhovna Rada’s resolution on dismissing the cabinet. In Lytvyn’s view, the failure of the head of state to meet the MPs last Thursday is “the first trial balloon that will allow us to continue the dialogue.”
The parliamentary anti-governmental coalition continued the “dialogue” in a rather odd way: on Thursday evening the Verkhovna Rada resolved to dismiss Fuel and Energy Minister Ivan Plachkov and Justice Minister Serhiy Holovaty (they were dismissed earlier, together with other cabinet ministers) and to pass a vote of no confidence in Naftohaz Ukrainy chief Oleksiy Ivchenko. “The situation in the Verkhovna Rada with respect to the cabinet dismissal is turning from a national tragedy into an ordinary farce,” the Our Ukraine bloc declared. “The repeated attempt [to dismiss the ministers] shows that the majority itself is not convinced that its decision is correct and legitimate.” Our Ukraine accused its political opponents of prolonging the parliamentary proceedings by one week for the sole purpose of using parliament as “an election campaign instrument.” Actually, the president let them do this, conceding two successive parliamentary “goals.” The Epiphany dip in icy water cannot be considered an adequate response to challenges, which showed that Yushchenko is in excellent health, but nothing more.
Despite everything, the president’s permanent representative in the Verkhovna Rada, Yuriy Kliuchkovsky, says that Yushchenko “is bent on seeking a dialogue,” emphasizing that the decisions that were adopted by violating the Constitution cannot be a subject of political bargaining.
The distinguished Ukrainian civic leader Yevhen Chykalenko wrote in 1909: “Our national character is really disgusting. We are born anarchists. As long as we are oppressed, we live and work almost unanimously, but as soon as things ease, destruction instantly begins. It is not so much indifference and lack of consciousness that causes indignation as the stubborn opposition of our people only because they are not the masters...They are ready to kill any issue, if only to erect from the ruins a monument of Herostratus’s glory unto themselves.” Who can say that this does not apply to the situation today?
