ANALYSIS: Rada approves 12 new members of Central Election Commission (03/07/04)

ANALYSIS

Rada approves 12 new members of Central Election Commission

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Belarus and Ukraine Report

The Verkhovna Rada on February 17 and 19 approved 12 new members of the Central Election Commission (CEC), thus bringing it to its full strength of 15 people. The CEC reportedly comprises 11 members delegated by pro-government forces, two by the Communist Party, and one each by the Socialist Party and Our Ukraine.

"I'm very disturbed by the fact that we are now witnessing [an unabashed attempt] to fill the CEC with representatives of different political forces," political analyst Andriy Yermolayev told the Kandydat website (http://www.kandydat.com.ua). "By virtue of this, it is being involuntarily admitted that each member of the newly formed CEC has some extra task [in the commission], that is, he or she wants to advance the interests of his or her party [there]."

Anatolii Hrytsenko, head of the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center think-tank, said he sees another risk in such a composition of the CEC: "The presence of people [delegated by the Socialist Party and Our Ukraine] in the CEC may be seen as a small victory [of the opposition], but on the other hand, it is only a shield [for the authorities], since two persons will in no significant way influence the activities of the CEC. And, at the same time, the opposition now cannot appeal to certain international organizations with complaints that its opinion is not taken into account. Formally, it is. But the current authorities control a majority of votes in the CEC and the commission as a whole."

On February 19, the 15 CEC members unanimously elected lawmaker Serhiy Kivalov as CEC chairman. According to some Ukrainian media, Mr. Kivalov, 49, is a very colorful person. Last week, Mr. Kivalov gave up his parliamentary mandate to be able to serve on the commission. However, before that he was a lawmaker and simultaneously chaired the High Council of Justice (a body distributing jobs among Ukrainian judges) and presided over the Odesa National Law Academy. He managed to persuade his colleagues in the Verkhovna Rada that he did not violate the law on the status of deputies by holding several positions because, he argued, he worked in the High Council of Justice and the Odesa National Law Academy on a non-salaried basis.

Mr. Kivalov first made his mark in the Verkhovna Rada in early 2003, when he proposed a bill on tax amnesty for the Ukrainian president. He proposed that the president of Ukraine be given "the right to tax amnesty that will result in freeing the taxpayer from financial, administrative and criminal responsibility for evading the payment of taxes and failing to declare incomes and hard-currency funds [as well as] movable and immovable property located both in Ukraine and outside its borders." The Ukrainian Parliament has declined to schedule this bill for a reading.

Mr. Kivalov was also behind the drafting of an expert opinion by the Odesa National Law Academy last year which claimed that President Kuchma is formally serving his first presidential term and may run for the presidency in 2004. One of Mr. Kivalov's scientific papers is devoted to President Kuchma's intellect and reportedly bears the title "The Thinking of Specialists in Public Law is Enriched by Contacts with Leonid Kuchma."

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus and Ukraine specialist at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

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