Verkhovna Rada elects vice-chairs (07/19/98)

Verkhovna Rada elects vice-chairs

Committee chairmanships divided among factions

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada elected two vice-chairpersons on July 10, and approved the chairpersons of its 22 parliamentary committees.

The national deputies agreed to the candidacies put forward by the Verkhovna Rada's recently elected chairman, Oleksander Tkachenko, after four days of discussions among the eight factions that make up the Parliament.

Adam Martyniuk, the second secretary of the Communist Party, which holds more than a quarter of all parliamentary seats, was given the nod as the first vice-chairman. Viktor Medvedchuk, a leading figure of the Social Democratic Party (United) was elected second vice-chairman.

Mr. Martyniuk, 47, is a former first secretary of the Lviv Oblast Communist Party and secretary of the Kyiv City Committee of the Communist Party, while Mr. Medvedchuk, 44, was a presidential advisor on tax policy issues and is currently president of the Ukrainian Barristers Union and president of the law BIM firm.

In the biosketch he submitted prior to his election as vice-chairman, Mr. Medved-chuk reported 1997 earnings of 1,880,308 hrv (approximately $940,000). Mr. Martyniuk did not report any earnings.

A majority, 235 national deputies, supported the candidacies.

The Verkhovna Rada also agreed, after heated discussions, that the chairmanships of its 22 committees should be divided up according to the proportion of deputies who belong to each of the eight factions.

Accordingly, the Communists, with 121 members, received six committees; the National Democrats, who number 91, five committees; Hromada, with 45 members, four committees; Rukh, with 47 members, took three committees; the 35 members of the Left-Center faction (Socialists and Agrarians) received two committees; and the Social Democrats (United), with 25 members, took one committee, as did the Greens, with 24 members. The Progressive Socialist faction, which has 16 members, was not voted a committee chairmanship.

Chairman Tkachenko has said the first order of business for the newly seated Parliament, which took two months to elect a chairman, would be to review and endorse the new 1998 budget that President Leonid Kuchma has resubmitted. The president has altered the budget in order to reduce the deficit from 3.3 percent to 2.5 percent. Mr. Tkachenko has agreed to keep the Parliament in session past its scheduled July 17 recess date to the end of the month.

Mr. Tkachenko also told the president that he supports the economic decrees that Mr. Kuchma has issued and would work to get them passed by the legislature.