Government told to find 27 billion
On March 27 the Constitutional Court of Ukraine ruled it was illegal to cancel public privileges in 2001. It will be recalled that eighteen months ago in order to solve budget problems Verkhovna Rada suspended, at the request of then Premier Viktor Yushchenko, privileges for some groups of individuals, including reduced housing repairs, telephone, heath center treatment, and public utility rates, as well as cutbacks in car prices and public transport fares. Eligible for these privileges were participants in the Chornobyl cleanup, pensioners, the military, and judges. A group of 55 deputies appealed this decision to the Constitutional Court which has only now ruled that the perquisites were canceled illegally.
“Now individuals can take legal action against the state to have the lost privileges compensated for,” says Constitutional Court judge Mykhailo Kostytsky who supervised the hearing of this case. For example, Chornobyl veterans can try to regain the cost of a health center holiday, while pensioners can have their telephone charges reimbursed. To do so, Mr. Kostytsky explains, the individual must prove in court that his incomes were lower than the 311 hryvnia monthly subsistence level in the past year.
The Constitutional Court made this decision primarily on the grounds that the fundamental law prohibits living standards lower than the subsistence level. Earlier, this level was calculated, in the case of pensioners, for example, by the combined amount of their pension and privileges. Deprived of the latter, many individuals found themselves below the official poverty line. It is they who have now got a chance to turn to the state for money. Yet, Mr. Kostytsky himself is quite skeptical about this being possible. “The courts will have to consider each individual grievance, so I don’t think there will be many people wishing to have the lost privileges compensated for,” the judge believes.
Yury Karmazin, head of the parliamentary group of 55, which initiated the Constitutional Court case, thinks the government is now officially obliged to acknowledge a year long debt to those depending on privileges. “Let them issue bonds and develop a mechanism to effect payments,” Mr. Karmazin says. According to the Ministry of Social Policy, the perquisites canceled last year and now suddenly restored cost a total 27 billion hryvnias. Anatoly Maksiuta, First Deputy State Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, who represented the government at the trial, has already announced that it seems unrealistic to reimburse such a huge amount. Moreover, he believes that by handing down this ruling the Constitutional Court has endangered the stability of this country’s financial system, for the budget does not provide any sources from which to pay for lost privileges. Let us also not forget that 27 billion is half the annual state budget.
Meanwhile, the parliament has already fully restored privileges for 2002, leaving again the state budget without the corresponding expenditure items. For this reason, the Kinakh government will not pay to fund such privileges. The cabinet is drafting a mechanism to replace the system of privileges with that of targeted financial aid. But this is not a matter of even next year. As to the perks some groups of the population have in fact been stripped of, it is not ruled out that this money can also ultimately be sued for, of course, if pensioners deem it necessary to run their feet off filing lawsuits and collecting endless documents.
In conclusion, it is worth noting some of the political paradoxes that occurred when the Constitutional Court was hearing the privileges case. Deputy Yury Karmazin undoubtedly used the opportunity to boost his popularity among ordinary voters with election just a few days away. The problem is that this is an issue of canceling a decision initiated by the Yushchenko government, while Mr. Karmazin himself is a member of Mr. Yushchenko’s election bloc. Another oddity is that, according to J udge Kostytsky, several dozen deputies and the group of 55, who protested against the cancellation of privileges, had voted in Verkhovna Rada a few months earlier for the articles that canceled those privileges. Whatever the case, elections is indeed a time for paradoxes.
