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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

Parliamentary Commission to Check How Good Kyiv’s New Roads Are

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Verkhovna Rada has set up an ad hoc commission of inquiry to check the legality of budget spending on the renovation of communications and roads in Kyiv, as well as other fiscal and investment aspects of municipal performance in 1996-98.

Kyiv residents are all familiar with such City Council construction projects. Of course, the capital must be kept tidy (by the way, it looked especially fine during the EBRD convention) and the public is prepared to put up with temporary inconveniences to see the city made even more beautiful. At present, however, this outwardly praiseworthy activity raises eyebrows. Why, for example, is renovation continuously done downtown where the streets look good enough, while elsewhere in the city (where the traffic is as active if not heavier) the roads are going from bad to worse? Do we really need such costly projects (which archaeologists say are also damaging)? Most importantly, is the municipal budget so large that we can spend so much on sprucing up our downtown?

The City Administration fails to give convincing answers to all these questions. In a democratic society the authorities are subject a the presumption of guilt. In other words, those in office are always suspect. In this case there are adequate reasons for suspicion (ungrounded, one can be certain). We have all watched US movies about laundering money in the construction business. We are suspicious not because we do not like our city fathers, but because it is our money being spent on all this “face-lifting.”

Perhaps the reason for the commission’s formation is precisely that short-sighted tactic of keeping their cards close to the vest (on June 30 The Day tried and failed to get a comment from the Presidential Representative). It would be naive to expect some eye-opening findings, for such commissions are formed for purely political purposes everywhere in the world, but there is every reason to expect that it will be a very painful thorn in the side of municipal authorities. Especially considering that among its members are such City Administration inveterate friends and mayoral candidates, who were denied their chance because the elections were canceled (e.g., Serhiy Holovaty, Leonid Kosakivsky, Mykhailo Brodsky, Yaroslav Fedoryn, and Valery Babych).

Photo Oleksiy Stasenko, The Day:

The large-scale construction now going on in Kyiv makes it possible to describe the mayoralty of Oleksandr Omelchenko as a separate historical epoch. Having undergone training with the reconstruction of Mykhailivsky Maidan and numerous roads, Hizzoner decided to take on the main thoroughfare under his own office window

 

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