Verkhovna Rada faces crisis, concludes its session prematurely (01/18/04)

Verkhovna Rada faces crisis, concludes its session prematurely

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Verkhovna Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn prematurely closed the winter parliamentary session on January 15, after opposition lawmakers continued to block the chairman's rostrum and paralyze the work of the legislative body.

It was the fourth consecutive day that members of the political opposition to the pro-presidential majority in Parliament did not allow for a plenary session to take place amid charges that the lawmakers had passed legislation illegally in order to move along a process of political reform the majority supports.

In fulfilling a warning that he would do so made two days earlier, Mr. Lytvyn brought the session to a close merely seven minutes into the legislative day, after opposition lawmakers again jammed the front of the session hall and did not allow parliamentary activity to begin.

Afterwards, Mr. Lytvyn criticized what he deemed the inappropriate behavior of the opposition in demanding that the Parliament reconsider a political reform bill it passed last week.

"Today they did not give us even the ability to close the fourth session in a civilized way," stated Mr. Lytvyn.

On January 13, the Rada chairman had warned that the country faced a parliamentary crisis if the opposition forces continued to block the Parliament's work. He had said that it could become the death knell for the parliamentary system in Ukraine.

However, he rejected assertions by some lawmakers that President Leonid Kuchma might now dismiss the Verkhovna Rada before it reconvenes. The president has the right to call for new parliamentary elections if the legislative body fails to meet within 30 days. Ukraine's Constitutional Court is now considering how the constitutional wording can be interpreted, as requested by the president to do so last year. The Verkhovna Rada's spring session is scheduled to open on February 3.

Mr. Lytvyn's decision to end the morning meeting, which was followed by the playing of Ukraine's national anthem, closed a turbulent winter session. Nonetheless, the Rada chairman said he could not consider it a failure, inasmuch as the lawmakers had managed to pass 120 legislative acts.

What Mr. Lytvyn did not mention was that prior to bringing the session to a close, the Parliament leadership had hoped to pass several tax bills, documents used by the Cabinet of Ministers as a basis for developing the 2004 national budget in the expectation that they would be approved. Without them, the government might not be able to fulfill revenue targets.

The opposition lawmakers who stopped the last week of legislative work, chiefly from the Our Ukraine and Tymoshenko parliamentary factions, had decided, as it turns out, that the only way to return to the matter of political and Constitutional reform - which pro-presidential forces have said repeatedly would not be re-visited because the bills were legally approved - was to paralyze the work of the Parliament.

While stating that he remained optimistic that the opposition factions would not continue to paralyze the Parliament in the next session, Mr. Lytvyn added that he and the rest of the majority leadership would consider developing a sergeant-at-arms system for the Verkhovna Rada.

"If we again see attempts to illegally control the work of the Parliament, we will have to turn to a policing method," explained Mr. Lytvyn.

In blocking legislative activity for a fourth consecutive day, the Our Ukraine and Tymoshenko political caucuses had demanded that the Parliament reconsider its December 24 passage of a political reform bill, the first stage of a process of constitutional change that would give the legislative body the right to elect the head of state and bypass a direct popular vote.

The bill is part of a plan of political reforms that President Kuchma is pursuing that he has said would turn Ukraine into a parliamentary/presidential state, more in line with European traditions. It includes plans for constitutional amendments that would give a parliamentary majority the right to appoint a prime minister and government - plus a new provision that empowers the Rada to elect the president - should they receive approval by a two-thirds parliamentary majority in the next session.

Oppositionist lawmakers, however, believe it is an effort by state authorities to ensure that power remains in their hands. The opposition to Mr. Kuchma states that the political reforms can be attained without amending the Constitution.

Several foreign diplomats and international organizations have stated that the reforms themselves would be democratically valid if pursued constitutionally, but have questioned whether it was proper to push the changes in a presidential election year.

Our Ukraine and Tymoshenko faction lawmakers have repeatedly accused the pro-presidential parliamentary majority of ramrodding the bill through the Parliament. The majority used a hand vote - in which 286 lawmakers were officially counted as supporting the bill - after opposition members did not allow for either an electronic or roll call vote by taking control of the administrative tables and chairman's rostrum each time an attempt was made to bring the issue to a vote.

Opposition members said after the vote that many of the bill's supporters voted with two hands and that the numbers who voted in favor of political reform were greater than the actual number of lawmakers present in the session hall at the time.

"Our position is that, first of all, parliamentary voting to abolish the popular election of the president is against the law and must, therefore, be reconsidered," explained National Deputy Viktor Pynzenyk, who heads the Reforms and Order Party and an Our Ukraine faction leader, who added that "it is illegal to allow the removal of a constitutionally-granted right to elect without a national referendum."

On January 13 Mr. Lytvyn suggested that Our Ukraine and the Tymoshenko Bloc had reneged on a deal that the representatives of the various factions had patched together late the previous night, which would have unblocked the Parliament's work.

Mr. Lytvyn explained that both sides had agreed on what some lawmakers called the "Moroz compromise." Mr. Lytvyn said that Our Ukraine and the Tymoshenko faction leaders had said they could support the political reform bill if provisions were included that would allow the 2004 presidential elections to remain a direct popular vote and delineate that no constitutional amendments could be approved without electoral support for them as expressed in a national referendum.

The failed proposal was dubbed the "Moroz compromise" after it was proposed by Socialist faction leader Oleksander Moroz, an opposition leader who has supported the controversial political reforms since he struck a compromise with President Kuchma late this past summer. The two politicians agreed at the time that the constitutional amendments should include a change that would allow the Parliament to elect the president.

Our Ukraine members said they decided that they could not support the compromise because they had also demanded a provision in the new bill that elections would take place on a proportional, by-party, basis, which the pro-presidential parliamentary forces had backed away from after initially consenting to support it.

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