• Українська
  • Русский
  • English
Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Oleksandr Tkachenko Proves Up To The Situation

13 November, 2012 - 00:00
Photo by Valery Miloserdov,The Day: Oleksandr Tkachenko

Speaker Tkachenko makes no secret of his desire to restore the vertical chain of command of the Councils of People’s Deputies, all the way from Verkhovna Rada to the district (raion) councils.

He had his first meeting with the chairmen of oblast, Kyiv and Sevastopol city councils, and the Crimean Speaker last Tuesday.

Verkhovna Rada will assist them with procedural documents and consultations, as well as organize training courses for the local people’s choices. Local deputies, in turn, will have to find a firm or enterprise to serve as a standard of economic rebirth, so colleagues from other regions could come and learn from its experience. Mr. Tkachenko asked to arrange for a workshop seminar at Chernihiv Brewery and Kyiv’s Obolon to study the specifics of turning enterprises into corporations.

The Speaker pointed to what he considered a negative phenomenon: handing over enterprises of national importance to foreigners. The meat-packing plant of Zaporizhzhia, for example, is under foreign ownership and the local dairy factory is controlled by Estonians. In his words, this change of ownership was assisted by certain local ranking bureaucrats. 99% of the tobacco industry’s output comes from joint ventures. “People smoke and get sick in Ukraine while the hryvnias are taken overseas,” he declared. And the Gypsies are even more treacherous. Using local authorities’ passivity, they are selling drugs to Ukrainian children, while their own never use the stuff.

Oleksandr Tkachenko made a special point of agriculture. Lest the corn and potato plantations perish under snow, he called on the local military commands and managers of enterprises to form harvesting teams using their own manpower, so they would have enough to last through the winter. He thought that the local councils could make better use of their arable land, setting up auxiliary farms and working out preferential tax terms.

It should be noted that the new Speaker is often accused of showing an “old-fashioned” approach to any measures being proposed. The Day resolutely disagrees and firmly believes that Mr. Tkachenko is up to the situation just perfectly! Of course, if some reforms were indeed carried out in the economy, especially in the agrarian sector, one would have every reason to blame the Speaker for lagging behind the times. But since there are (and are likely to be) no reforms, Mr. Tkachenko’s ideas sound quite appropriate.

 

Rubric: