From ambitions to responsibility

Although presidential candidates’ election programs were published last week, the pattern of electoral preferences had been shaped much earlier. The only correction was made when the popular candidate Vitali Klitschko withdrew his candidacy. The new Maidan-brought values have caused a wide circle of people to take a new look at their responsibility to the country as voters. Yet the fact that society is now aware of the necessity to make qualitatively different demands to bidders for the topmost governmental offices has failed to make political elites revise their attitudes and update their ranks. Given this dissonance, it is important to establish a system of interaction and control, which would allow society to supervise those vested with a public trust mandate.

However, the control establishment algorithm demands, first of all, that there should be requirements and criteria by which the elected person’s performance can be judged. Taking into account the events that have occurred in this country over the past few months, there will be a lot of such criteria. The future president will have to address a number of extremely important and rather difficult problems. He or she must not only legitimize power in Ukraine, but also, with new threats around, rally the country together and introduce irrevocable radical changes.

The best way to avoid disappointments and keep up the desire to defend exalted ideas and ideals is to set the criteria and standards of work in good time. The Day has asked some experts and public figures to name the main demands to the future president.

COMMENTARIES

Hennadii DRUZENKO, jurist, political journalist:

“I am not sure. The Maidan was a demand for new faces in politics. There are only two such faces among the presidential candidates: Bohomolets and a controversial and semi-mythical Yarosh. The rest are ‘the same old story.’

“The demands are simple: self-sufficiency, honesty, adherence to principles, strategic thinking, readiness to make unpopular decisions, availability of a team, and, desirably, good education and command of English.”

Oleksandr SOLONTAI, expert, Institute of Political Education:

“As for the candidates’ list, society is naturally taking a dim view of the offer, with many people saying that there is nobody to choose from. But it is not exactly so. The choice is enormous: all who could register have done so, and there is a wide range of candidates. On the other hand, our society does not trust most of the candidates. And it is a good thing because this will promote reformation of the office of president whose powers are excessive now. Unless we reduce the powers of a potential usurper, we will have no democracy.

“Here are some more demands to presidential candidates: to make public the entire personal financial information, drop business and become a professional politician, and be ready to run for the presidency again after the whole system of power and the Constitution have been reformed. Besides, a candidate should give a clear answer to the questions of Crimea, the army, the Constitution, the position in case of a war with Russia, and all the other questions which sociologists consider to be the most urgent. Politicians must not evade answering questions about problems of nationwide importance.”

Hanna HOPKO, Reform Survival Kit community, coalition For a Ukraine Free of Tobacco Smoke:

“We want to sign a social contract with candidates for the presidency next week.

“We, civil society representatives, demand that the candidate who will be elected the next president of Ukraine should introduce a package of draft laws and resolutions, known as Reform Survival Kit, which was and still is being drawn up by about 120 experts and public figures, and adopt a new Constitution in the interests of Ukrainian society and consolidation of Ukraine as an independent state.

“The Reform Survival Kit envisages political steps and reform packages which will make it possible to effect changes in the shortest possible time and forestall a systemic and economic bankruptcy of the state which is the result of the policy of Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. We therefore demand that the newly-elected president submit to parliament or make a relevant political decision, before the end of 2014, about the 12 items of the Reform Survival Kit which are supposed to revitalize and rally together this country.

“Public figures emphasize that Euromaidan has not yet accomplished its main mission – to change the rules, not the faces. The reform package consists of two blocks: seven top-priority reforms: 1) judicial reform and reform of the prosecution service, 2) reform of the law-enforcement bodies, 3) anticorruption reform, 4) reform of the election law, 5) administrative reform, 6) decentralization and regional development, 7) tax reform; and five medium-term reforms: 1) deregulation, encouragement of entrepreneurship and investments, 2) pension and social security reform, 3) education reform, 4) health care reform, and 5) land reform.

“The parliamentary agenda in the two next weeks: anticorruption reform, judicial reform, and education reform. Reform Survival Kit activists have offered MPs an agenda of six draft laws for April 1-13. Three of them should be discussed in parliamentary committees in the first week of April. The next week the MPs should approve four bills in the first reading and two as a whole. The public-proposed bills will help Ukrainians get a visa-free treatment in the EU, fair court, the fair and accountable authorities. The public also demands that MPs begin to carry out the higher education reform.

“The public suggests that MPs vote on four anticorruption bills in the next plenary week: No. 4573 which calls for the establishment of a national bureau of anticorruption investigations (it is to be approved in the committee and voted upon in the first reading); No. 4556 which helps cancel visas for the Ukrainians traveling to EU countries and provides for changes in the Criminal Code and other laws (to be approved in principle and as a whole); No. 4587, a new wording of the Law ‘On Public Purchasers’ (to be approved in the committee and in the first reading); No. 2012a which increases demands for a transparent fulfillment of budgets by governmental bodies (to be approved in the first reading). As for judicial reform, Bill No. 4378-1 is to launch lustration of the judges implicated in human rights violations from November 21 onwards (to be modified by the committee with due account of public criticisms and be approved as a whole). The reform of education: Bill No. 1187-2 encourages the autonomy and decentralization of higher educational institutions, the link between educational institutions and the present-day labor market, and greater mobility of students (to be approved in the first reading).”

For reference: the Reform Survival Kit initiative comprises about 140 experts and public activists from 13 reform directions. Twenty-four Verkhovna Rada members have formed an inter-factional association, Platform of Reforms. Every week Reform Survival Kit activists suggest an agenda to parliament. In the last plenary week, March 24-28, the activists succeeded in having two laws passed – No. 2207 on transparent public purchases and No. 0947 which is the second part of the Law “On Access to Public Information.”

Mykhailo BASARAB, political scientist:

“A traditional problem for Ukrainian politics is failure to meet a societal demand for a certain ideal image of a Ukrainian politician from among those who are making a presidential bid. Naturally, each candidate will be trying to guess and live up to this image. But voters are most likely to pick up the most acceptable candidature or at least the one that arouses the least suspicion.

“There are some nuances about the abrupt growth of Petro Poroshenko’s electoral rating. It is connected, above all, with such thing as ‘electoral handicap.’ At first, voters gave it to Vitali Klitschko, but he just failed to live up to it and work it off. So we saw a fall in his rating and immediate emergence of a new politician to whom the voter transferred this handicap. Poroshenko’s rating is not a support level achieved by sweat and blood, it is also the handicap that he took over from Klitschko well before the latter had withdrawn his candidacy – the voter himself has revised his expectations. There is a certain danger for him in this case because I doubt that he will be able to come up to the expectations.

“In general, the key task for a president is, first of all, to give a well-deserved rebuff to the aggressor. It should not necessarily be a war, but the Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov is taking an absolutely different position today. The position should be more professional, better-considered and firmer than the one Ukraine is taking today, which in fact provokes the aggressor to mull over the use of force against this country.

“As for domestic challenges, the No.1 objective for an ideal president is to fight corruption. This is a problem that accounts for 80 percent of what slows down reforms in any field.

“Responding to the aggressor and eradicating corruption – if the president manages to cope with these two extremely important tasks, I am more than convinced that almost all the other problems will be solved by themselves.”