Constitutional Reform?
Several months ago Rostyslav Pavlenko, now working on his doctorate and one of the best students I have ever had the honor to teach, held a presentation of his first book, Parliamentary Responsibility of the Government: World and Ukrainian Experience. Among those taking part were a number of prominent people’s deputies who tempered their admiration for the author’s truly impressive scholarly acumen with a note of caution: in politics things happen because there is first somebody who orders it and then the order gets filled, indicating that if the customers remain the same, whether Ukraine is a presidential-parliamentary republic or a parliamentary-presidential one might not make a great deal of difference in terms of what laws are actually passed or what the government does. And no matter how much one might frown on lobbying, which I consider an indispensable attribute of representative self-government, the distinguished lawmakers were only repeating a well-nigh universal truism: politics reflects the interests of those in a position to pursue those interests.
Recall the tremendous effort and resultant euphoria that accompanied the birth of the current Constitution not so many years ago. Nobody was fully satisfied with it, and the French Fifth Republic Constitution of 1959, taken as its basis, is not my personal favorite. This is because its division of executive powers and responsibilities between a president and prime minister can make it very difficult to determine who is responsible when, as often happens, things do not go as well as they should. In Ukraine this has led to a situation where sometimes might appear like the president appoints a new premier every year or so to correct his predecessor’s failures, for which the president is thereby able to avoid all responsibility. In countries that have classic parliamentary systems like Great Britain, Germany, or Italy, when things go wrong the cabinet falls along with the parliament that elected it, and new elections are called to choose a new parliament that will choose and take responsibility for a new cabinet. In the United States, where the Constitution vests the president with supreme executive power, it is also difficult to pass the buck. When President Nixon admitted that as chief executive he was ultimately responsible for the Watergate Scandal but not to blame, he soon became the former president. In other words, those with the power have to take the blame. Here, it seems, they do not. And the proposed reforms in Ukraine fail to address this issue, which I personally think most needs reform. Still, the veterans of Ukraine’s Constitution Night have every right to take pride in their achievement. They did the best that could have possibly been done given the political realities of the day, and that is the most that anyone can ever expect of their elected representatives. Tinkering with that achievement should not be taken lightly.
Let us also recall that the political reform now being discussed was mandated by a referendum called as a result of a “popular initiative” where I saw nobody collecting signatures in the streets. The signatories of my acquaintance did so more or less as follows: the manager gathered the “labor collective” of a given enterprise and said, “First we’re all going to sign this petition on reform, and tomorrow we’ll get paid.” Then, everybody showed their initiative by signing, and the next day they got paid. Could this have something to do with the fact that the public opinion polls show relatively little popular understanding or support for the changes mandated by such an outpour of popular enthusiasm? But what do I, a naive American, understand of such subtle things as the people’s will in Ukraine?
