"Decisive week" fizzles as Verkhovna Rada fiddles (05/25/97)

"Decisive week" fizzles as Verkhovna Rada fiddles

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - It was to have been a decisive week in the work of the Verkhovna Rada as it headed into the home stretch of its eighth session. Parliament Vice-Chairman Viktor Musiaka said so on May 18. Fifteen major bills would come to the Parliament floor for a vote.

"It's going to be one of the toughest weeks I remember," he told journalists at a press conference that Monday.

Was a legislature that can be characterized as one of the most deliberative such bodies in the world up to the task? Could national deputies in fact pass two tax reform bills, an election law and also begin reviewing a new civil and commercial code all in one week, as well as a series of lesser bills? Deputy Musiyaka even proposed the possibility that the budget, which has been stalled somewhere in the never-never land between the Verkhovna Rada and the Cabinet of Ministers, might finally come to the floor for a second reading - if the tax reform package was approved.

Yes, it was too much to ask for. After gearing up for the week with coalition meetings and committee sessions on Monday, the deputies got right down to work on Tuesday ... and acted on two lesser bills; they approved the appointment of a Verkhovna Rada human rights commissioner and rejected three variations of a bill aimed at re-nationalization of property.

The afternoon session proved a dud because Chairman Oleksander Moroz was receiving an honorary diploma from the town of Slavutych and visiting the Ukrainian Stock Exchange.

You can say what you want about Mr. Moroz, and much has been said regarding his loose play with parliamentary procedure, but without him at the helm this legislative ship that rarely steers a straight course comes to a halt.

One thing was decided that afternoon, however. The budget would not be presented for a second reading that week. Chairman Moroz released a statement in which he said that because the Cabinet of Ministers had only supplied the Verkhovna Rada with only "materials for work on the budget" rather than the entire package, the budget would not be discussed until June at the earliest.

He also announced that, with no budget package, no general session would take place the last week of May, and the deputies would spend the week in their constituencies, which to many of them becomes a week off or a week to take care of their individual business concerns.

So, on Wednesday, at the morning session, it was time to get to work, right? But hold on, here was Poland's President Alexander Kwasniewski, who appeared for a scheduled speech before the assembly. That blew any plans for moving a few bills across the floor early on. After the Polish president's remarks, the Parliament voted in an amendment to the State Property Fund Statute and a ban on the increase on prices and tariffs for housing and utilities. It must be noted that these were both political votes and reactions to presidential decrees. And, lest it be misunderstood, the Verkhovna Rada always moves quickly to react to the president, especially when deputies do not agree with him.

In the afternoon the deputies decided they had to reconvene in committees, and no general session took place.

With two days left in the week, the deputies had not voted on any of the major bills that Mr. Musiyaka had mentioned. The only notable action was their approval of President Leonid Kuchma's annotations (some of them, anyway) to the bill on local self-government, which should allow the president to remove a veto he had imposed.

So the agenda announced for Thursday was obvious and impossible, and the deputies proved themselves up to the task.

They were to examine in one day drafts of the civil and commercial code, the draft law on corporate taxes and various other amendments to the tax code. Oh yes, also on the agenda was the second reading of the election bill.

Did they do it? No. They did decide that Friday would be better spent listening to Minister of Defense Oleksander Kuzmuk and Foreign Minister Hennadii Udovenko speak about their scheduled May 30 meeting in Lisbon with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the Ukraine-NATO document that is expected to be finalized there.

As the Thursday evening session progressed and the deputies quibbled over details of tax amortization, Chairman Moroz interrupted the proceedings briefly, looked at his troops and proudly told whomever cared to listen: "I would like those who criticize us for stalling and not doing anything to spend 40 minutes on the floor here going over a complicated bill like this, point by point. People would then better understand just how much work we do."

But the real issue is not how much work the Verkhovna Rada does, only how much gets done.

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