One year after its adoption, Constitution gets mixed reviews (06/29/97)

One year after its adoption, Constitution gets mixed reviews

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - In the year since Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada ratified the country's first democratic Constitution, the document has received mixed reviews.

Many believe that Ukraine's fundamental law, which was finally passed by the Verkhovna Rada on June 28 after an arduous 23-hour session, including a 16-hour overtime session that stretched into the night and early morning, is fundamentally flawed because it is a political document: the result of compromise and political battle over a four-year period.

Already, there have been suggestions that the basic law needs to be amended, as Verkhovna Rada Chairman Oleksander Moroz himself suggested at the beginning of the last session of Parliament.

However, the fact remains that the Constitution guarantees Ukrainians basic rights and freedoms and delineates the country's branches of power and associated responsibilities.

Such was the consensus presented on June 25 at a town meeting on the occasion of the first anniversary of Ukraine's Constitution held in the Ukrainian Home in Kyiv. Sponsored by the National Democratic Party of Ukraine (NDPU), the panel that led the discussion consisted of Verkhovna Rada National Deputies Ivan Pliusch, the former chairman of the Parliament; Mykhailo Syrota, head of the Verkhovna Rada committee that prepared the Constitution; and Oleksander Yemets. It was one of several conferences that have been held as Ukraine marks its first year under its first post-Soviet constitution.

Mr. Pliusch directly addressed the mixed feelings that exist today among politicians and citizens alike regarding the Constitution. "The mere ratification of the Constitution was a fundamental acknowledgment of Ukraine as an independent country with democratic structures," he said. "As for the document itself, we must ask ourselves whether we could have developed a flawless Constitution in a country that today is so full of flaws."

Mr. Pliusch said that amendments are needed and will be made to the Constitution, which he considers a positive process. "The Constitution should reflect what our country is striving for, not what it is today."

The three members of the panel, all of whom belong to the NDPU, agreed that Ukraine still lacks laws needed to make the treaty workable and enforceable, including a law on local government self-rule, a civil code, a commercial code, as well as reforms in the Procurator General's Office and the Judiciary.

Mr. Pliusch also said that politicians and government officials must learn what separation of powers truly means. "Today, people understand that there are branches of government. But at times they do not see it as part of a tree," Mr. Pliusch said. "When a branch dries up it is sawed off and a new limb grows. However, some in government feel that each limb should become a tree."

All the members of the panel agreed the biggest deficiency surrounding the Constitution is the public's lack of education regarding what the fundamental law does and what it means. "We have developed a fine instrument," said Mr. Yemets. "What we need today is for the people to learn how to play the instrument."

Mr. Syrota gave an example of just how much public education is still needed. "Many people have approached me and said that the Constitution is an anti-national bourgeois document. I ask them how that is. They reply that they are not receiving their wages, they have no welfare insurance," no medical insurance," he explained.

"I ask them: 'Is that the fault of the Constitution? Do you think it would be better without a Constitution?' "

Ratifying a Constitution, which was four years in the making, became possible only after President Leonid Kuchma began hinting in the spring of 1996 that he was ready to have Ukraine's basic law ratified through a citizen's referendum. Until that time the issues had been batted around like a political beach ball, with leftists and rightists alike working to gain strategic and philosophical political advantages written into the fundamental law. Suddenly left with the threat that it could end up outside the approval process, the Parliament began to act with a sense of direction.

Deputy Syrota, who stood at the podium in the Verkhovna Rada chambers for all of the 23 hours that it took to approve the Constitution's 161 articles, said the biggest challenge that his committee faced was to overcome the obstacles deliberately placed before it by those who opposed the document as written - mostly Communists. He explained that after the Constitution was presented on the floor of the Verkhovna Rada, the committee received almost 1,000 remarks from deputies in the form of recommended corrections.

Not long after the committee had jumped that hurdle, he finally felt that Ukraine would soon have a Constitution. "I knew that we would have a Constitution after the preamble was passed." He explained that at that point he saw a real desire by the politicians to finish the process.

Originally, the last words of the preamble had read, "recognizing our responsibility before previous, present and future generations ..." Mr. Syrota explained, that during the third (and final) reading and debate, a member of the democratic right suggested that the word "God" should be included, which was approved. Then Speaker Moroz countered that the words "our own consciousness" should be there as well, which also was approved. "It was the first time I felt that both sides of the political spectrum were moving constructively to piece together a fundamental law," related Mr. Syrota.

He also acknowledged the role of Mr. Moroz in bringing the sides together on two crucial issues: the national symbols, which were opposed by the left, and the status of Crimea as an autonomous republic, which the rightists were against. In order to move through the logjam that existed, Mr. Moroz suggested that both issues should be voted on as a package, which forced both sides of the chamber to vote for the opposition's sacred cow in order to get their own approved. "The ploy worked, although it took us from 1 a.m. to 7 a.m. to finally resolve the problem and approve the articles," explained Mr. Syrota.

And what does he recall most vividly of those long hours? "What is most memorable is the playing of the national anthem after the Constitution as a whole was passed," recalled Mr. Syrota. "I remember the tears that flowed from the eyes of many deputies - tears of cleansing, tears of joy that the Ukrainian nation finally had its own Constitution."

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