ONE YEAR IN OFFICE, FIVE TO GO

Answering The Day's question if he is satisfied with one year with the post, Mr. Tkachenko said, "I think Parliament has done a good job." He also replied to the additional question of why the President continues to threaten Parliament and what is the Speaker's attitude to it, "I can't agree that Parliament always stands in the President's way. His own apparatus might stand in his way, or he could be dissatisfied with the way his Cabinet works. As to Parliament, only we are authorized to assess its work. The President can, of course, express his opinion. He has that right. But I cannot accept his constant references to the harmfulness and low quality of Parliament's work."

Mr. Tkachenko also gave the President some advice on what he should do instead of criticizing Parliament. Translated from the diplomatic: take a good look at yourself.

Mr. Tkachenko also cherishes an idea of "streamlining" law enforcement agencies, still under a barrage of complaints from the provinces about their direct involvement in organizing the election campaign in favor of Leonid Kuchma. The Speaker said that any candidate, who arrives in a region, should be accompanied by a deputy minister of internal affairs and a deputy Security Service chief as provided for by law. Supervision of this should be assigned to the Prosecutor-General's Office.

As to legislative work as such, Parliament has so far successfully torpedoed almost all the President's decrees. "The point is most bills based on presidential decrees concern issues regulated by current legislation. So I can't understand why we need a different law or decree." This is how Mr. Tkachenko explained the situation to the press.

INCIDENTALLY

The Day's correspondent asked a representatives from the Right and the Left to assess the parliamentary head on the first anniversary of his assuming the post.

Heorhy KRIUCHKOV, the Communist Party of Ukraine:

"It seems to me Mr. Tkachenko has done his duties well in this difficult year. Extremely difficult legislative decisions have been made, such as the treaty with Russia, the Black Sea Fleet Agreement, and the Constitution of the Crimea. He is quite up to the job. He has managed to keep Verkhovna Rada moving forward, and he is able to do more than this. He would have been an ideal prime minister in a parliamentary republic, without a president. But when there is the post of a president invested with omnipotent powers, Mr. Tkachenko could, of course, handle this also and do it much better and skillfully than the present incumbent."

Ivan DRACH, Rukh:

"I am happy that when Verkhovna Rada was electing this outstanding politician as Speaker I was far away in Australia and did not take part. I am proud of it. Now it has become clear that one absolutely always has to be №.1 in this bedlam called Ukraine, so he has reached the home stretch of the presidential race and messed everything up."