Ukraine's national referendum subject of attack at home and abroad (02/27/00)

Ukraine's national referendum subject of attack at home and abroad

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The national referendum that President Leonid Kuchma has scheduled for the end of April, which could lead to a dismissal of the Parliament and give the president additional powers, has come under serious attack at home and in Europe as critics declare it unconstitutional.

While Ukrainian lawmakers opposed to President Kuchma's decision to decree a national poll are questioning the right of the president to ask for changes to the Constitution without the consent of the legislature, the president maintains that he is simply executing the will of the people.

President Kuchma decreed a national referendum on January 15 after a petition-gathering effort succeeded in collecting nearly 4 million signatures. Opponents, however, reject the notion that it was a spontaneous popular effort and suggest that it was a move orchestrated by the president's aides and cohorts to give the president more power over the legislative branch of government.

An investigative team from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), led by rapporteurs Hanne Severinsen and Renata Wohlwend, arrived in Kyiv on February 16 to look into the legality of the national referendum after a plea from the leftist minority in the Verkhovna Rada.

After two days of meetings with national deputies, the president, members of Ukraine's Constitutional Court and the Central Election Commission, the two raporteurs suggested that Ukraine should at least reschedule, if not cancel, the national referendum because the way in which it was organized was constitutionally dubious.

"If the referendum takes place in contradiction to a possible decision of the Venetian Commission on the lack of authority by the president of Ukraine in the Constitution to decree such a referendum, then it cannot be excluded that the fate of Belarus awaits Ukraine," said Ms. Severinsen after meeting with Viktor Skomorokha, the chief judge of Ukraine's Constitutional Court.

One of the theories suggested by some political analysts in Ukraine is that Mr. Kuchma is copying moves made by Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka in 1996 when he dismissed the Belarusian Parliament and changed the Constitution, giving himself dictatorial powers and extending his term in office.

Ms. Severinsen and her colleagues from the PACE are asking that President Kuchma delay the referendum until after a ruling by a team of PACE constitutional experts, called the Venetian Commission, on the constitutional merits of the Ukrainian referendum and the way in which it was organized. The commission previously gave extensive advice to Ukraine in drafting its Constitution in the days before it was ratified in July 1996.

The PACE investigative team said the chief problem with the referendum is that, since it involves constitutional changes, the amendments should have been developed and approved by the Verkhovna Rada, as the Constitution of Ukraine clearly delineates.

Ms. Severinsen threatened Ukraine with exclusion from the Council of Europe if it did not "execute European norms and standards," a threat Ukraine has heard before on the matter of the death penalty.

President Kuchma, standing firm on his decision, said he could not ignore the bidding of a portion of the populace and would allow the Constitutional Court of Ukraine to decide the matter. He provoked further the controversy when he said that Ukraine "would not be guided by the conclusions of the Venetian Commission."

The Constitutional Court currently has before it two appeals from deputies asking for a ruling on the legality of the national referendum. Chief Justice Skomorokha said that, although PACE representatives had asked that the court put off its decision until after the Venetian Commission hearings scheduled for early April, the justices would discuss the case and render a decision at the end of February.

The president and his supporters maintain that the questions in the referendum that refer to the Constitution - on the restructuring of the Parliament into a bicameral body; its reduction from 450 to 300 members; extension of presidential powers to dismiss the Verkhovna Rada if a national referendum voices a vote of no-confidence in the parliamentary body, or if in the course of a month's time the Parliament fails to form a sustainable and working majority; and that the Constitution must be ratified by a national referendum - are all merely consultative in character and therefore not constitutional changes per se.

"I really don't understand why [PACE representatives] said that if the referendum should be held it will be a black mark on our democracy since the referendum is in large part advisory," said Viktor Medvedchuk, the recently elected first vice-chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, who is an attorney.

He said he believes the PACE representatives were misguided by national deputies who asked for their help in condemning the referendum.

"For instance, they thought that in the proposed bicameral Parliament, the second house would be appointed by the president [and not popularly elected] because that is what they were told," said Mr. Medvedchuk.

He said the rapporteurs also did not realize that, even if the question was approved in the referendum, 39 laws and Constitutional statutes still would have to be passed by the Parliament before the change took place.

Mr. Medvedchuk downplayed the Venetian Commission's jurisdiction over Ukraine other than as a consultative body of the Council of Europe, of which Ukraine is a member.

Viktor Shyshkin, a member of the Hromada Party and a well-respected former minister of justice of Ukraine, told Interfax-Ukraine that the president had the legal right to raise only a single question in the referendum. "Only one, the question on no-confidence in the Verkhovna Rada could be raised," said Mr. Shyshkin.

The issue of the national referendum has agitated more than merely the leftist minority in Parliament. One of the two petitions filed with the Constitutional Court asking that it rule the referendum illegal was submitted by 108 lawmakers - most of whom are members of factions belonging to the newly formed parliamentary majority, which has pledged to legislate the president's economic agenda.

At a roundtable on February 22 organized by Anatolii Matvienko's Sobor Party, representatives of 10 of Ukraine's leading political parties, including both Rukh parties, the Socialist Party and the Ukrainian Republican Party, criticized the intent, the process and the constitutionality of the referendum.

Mr. Matvienko, today a major critic of the president but once the chairman of the pro-presidential National Democratic Party, said a strategy must be developed to stop "the dirty techniques and lies" that surround the referendum. He described the upcoming national poll as an effort by the president to turn the Ukrainian legislature into a "pocket Parliament."

Serhii Holovatyi, another consistent critic of presidential policy, said the petition gathering process, which was organized to give credence to the populist nature of the national poll, was a sham. He explained that during a meeting with the PACE representatives CEC Chairman Mykhailo Riabets could not properly answer a PACE rapporteur's question on how the signatures were checked.

Meanwhile National Deputy Mykhailo Syrota, considered the father of the Constitution because of the role he played in guiding the document through the ratification process, said the referendum is a flagrant move by politicians and businessmen close to the president to assure them control over the Ukrainian business world.

"It is more for the benefit of the financial-business oligarchies that would use the changes in the Parliament and the Constitution to take further control of the political and economic spheres of Ukraine," said Mr. Syrota.

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