Ukraine's vice prime ministers poised to implement Yushchenko's program (03/06/05)

Ukraine's vice prime ministers poised to implement Yushchenko's program

by Tatiana Matviichuk
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

KYIV - The new government of Ukraine headed by the dynamic 44-year-old Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, also includes a first vice prime minister and three vice prime ministers with specific portfolios. Together with the 17 ministers and the chief of the Security Service of Ukraine they make up the Cabinet of Ministers and the team that is charged with implementing President Viktor Yushchenko's vision for Ukraine.

Ukraine's first vice prime minister, Anatolii Kinakh, 50, was one of the candidates for the presidency in the recent election campaign. His campaign was notable for the fact that he, while not belonging to the Yushchenko team, was the first to say that a person with a criminal background could not become the president of Ukraine - an obvious reference to Mr. Yushchenko's chief rival in that campaign, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

Having received 1 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, Mr. Kinakh, leader of the Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, declared that he would support the candidate who did not employ unfair methods in the political campaign. He chose Mr. Yushchenko.

Born in Bratushany, Moldova, and educated in St. Petersburg, Russia, Mr. Kinakh is a construction engineer who worked in shipyards and shipbuilding plants in Estonia and Ukraine. He is president of the Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs and was first elected to the Verkhovna Rada in 1990. He also served as the president's representative in the Mykolayiv region (1992-1994), chaired the Mykolayiv Oblast Council (1994-1995) and was vice prime minister for industrial policy (1995-1996). He again served as a national deputy in 1998-2001 and then was prime minister of Ukraine from May 2001 to November 2002.

In his new post as first vice prime minister, Mr. Kinakh stated that the new government would do its best to prove to the world that Ukraine is an attractive venue for investments; and that it would develop the manufacturing, scientific and technical potential of the country. Also at the top of his list is a reform of the tax system.

Speaking to foreign journalists in Kyiv on February 26, Mr. Kinakh said the government was working toward making "systemic and constructive amendments" to the 2005 national budget.

He cautioned the news media to avoid the word "reprivatization," as he underlined that the new government will never allow illegal seizure of property. Mr. Kinakh added that if the law and national interests were violated during the privatization of enterprises, particularly of strategic enterprises, the government would act to restore fairness "in accordance with the law."

Mr. Kinakh also noted the dire need for resuming work toward forming a transnational gas transportation consortium. In interview with Izvestia he said that there is no opportunity for a price reduction for gas from Turkmenistan supplied to Ukraine in 2005 because "it reflects the trends of the world market." He noted that the price for 1,000 cubic meters of Turkmen gas for Ukraine now stands at $58 (U.S.), which is $14 more than previous price.

As regards Ukraine's relations with East and West, the new first vice prime minister said on February 15 that "the position of Ukraine, its president and government is that methods for protecting the national interest need to be improved, regardless of their orientation toward the West or the East." He said he supports the creation of a free trade zone within the Single Economic Space and that Ukraine seeks accession to the World Trade Organization.

The three vice-prime ministers in the Tymoshenko Cabinet all are members of the Our Ukraine bloc headed by Mr. Yushchenko.

Vice Prime Minister for European Integration Oleh Rybachuk, 46, has been a national deputy since April 2002. He said he has the "full support of President Yushchenko," and has underscored, no one will prevent him "from fulfilling his tasks - no matter who is the prime minister or the head of the Presidential Secretariat (which replaced the presidential administration).

Mr. Rybachuk was introduced to Mr. Yushchenko in 1992. When Mr. Yushchenko was chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, Mr. Rybachuk obtained an eight-month internship in the United States and Great Britain with a Georgetown University program. He holds degrees in philology and economics. During his work at the NBU, Mr. Rybachuk said he was offered a position to "head a representative office of one of the five world's biggest banks in Ukraine," but he refused. When Mr. Yushchenko served as Ukraine's prime minister (December 1999 to May 2001), Mr. Rybachuk was his chief of staff.

Most recently, during the presidential election, Mr. Rybachuk was the person who, according to The New York Times, kept in touch with the intelligence services of Ukraine, in particular, the Security Service of Ukraine. It is probably as a result of those associations that he made public tapes that recorded the authorities' falsification of the presidential election.

According to Mr. Rybachuk, it was back in 2002 that Mr. Yushchenko and he came to an agreement that in the future government Mr. Rybachuk would be responsible for Euro-integration issues. During the presidential campaign he explained: "Yushchenko is becoming the president so that Ukraine could become a member of the European Union. This is the mission of his presidency."

During his visit to Brussels on February 21 Mr. Rybachuk expressed confidence that the European Union will grant Ukraine the status of a market country and that it will enter the World Trade Organization by the end of the year.

"Ukraine's tasks for this year are to obtain free-market status and membership in the WTO, and to start negotiations on creating a free trade zone with the EU," he told journalists. At the same time Mr. Rybachuk assured EU members: "Now you have a very responsible Ukrainian government, you have very responsible partners, and if we put our signatures on something, there is no way we're not going to deliver it."

Speaking about prospects for relations with Russia and Ukraine's participation in the Single Economic Space (SES), Mr. Rybachuk noted that this question is considered within the framework of removing trading barriers between the states. "Now we shall speak with Moscow as an equal," Mr. Rybachuk said in an interview with the Russian newspaper Izvestia. "It is necessary to tell the Russians: we are your partners, but we are going to act according to our own interests." Mr. Rybachuk also pointed out that Ukraine's dependence on Russian energy supplies does not prevent Ukraine from integration with Europe. He underlined that Ukraine buys gas from Russia at near market prices.

Mykola Tomenko, 41, who was named the vice prime minister for humanitarian and social issues, is familiar to the Ukrainian public for his appearances during the Orange Revolution on the stage of the maidan (Independence Square). Every day he informed the tens of thousands gathered about further protest actions or the events of the day. As his colleague Volodymyr Filenko noted, he and newly appointed Internal Affairs Minister Yurii Lutsenko were responsible for organizing the masses and other administrative matters related to the maidan actions. "We were obligated to give the microphone to somebody, into reliable hands. We gave it to Mykola Tomenko," said Mr. Filenko.

A political scientist who has worked in government and research institutes, Mr. Tomenko was a history major at Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. He 1992 he defended his doctoral thesis on "The Issue of Statehood in the Program Documents and Activities of Present-Day Parties in Ukraine: A Historic-Political Analysis." He served in Afghanistan in 1983-1985.

Since June 2002 Mr. Tomenko has headed the Parliament's Committee on Freedom of Speech and Information Issues - the only political committee whose chairmanship the Our Ukraine bloc had received. As that committee's chairman, in October 2002 Mr. Tomenko wrote the first letter to then President Leonid Kuchma regarding the "temnyky" that were sent to leading TV channels from the presidential administration. According to Ukrainska Pravda, Mr. Tomenko made it clear that the head of the presidential administration, Viktor Medvedchuk, was involved in issuing the temnyky (secret instructions on what themes the news media should emphasize or quash). Mr. Tomenko wrote several similar letters to Mr. Kuchma on that topic.

On December 4, 2004, Mr. Tomenko took an active part in the first parliamentary hearings on "Society, Mass Media, Power: Freedom of Speech and Censorship in Ukraine."

Vice Prime Minister Tomenko told journalists in Kyiv on February 16 that he intends to approach the Verkhovna Rada with a proposal to reduce the financing of Holos Ukrainy, the official newspaper of the Verkhovna Rada, and the state secretary with a proposal to discontinue funding of the Prezydentskyi Vistnyk (Presidential Bulletin). "The president," he said, "means to communicate with all the media on par."

Speaking about regional and municipal media, Mr. Tomenko said these must be given an opportunity for independent development. He said he has appealed to oblast administration chairmen and mayors to save the funds that were previously spent on supporting state-run and communal mass information media, and to instead transfer these funds toward the needs of the people in their constituencies.

In an interview with UT-1 television, Mr. Tomenko said the government will focus its efforts also on fighting corruption and bringing to justice those who break the law. Regarding former government officials, he said, "I think that those individuals who showed neglect of the law should be put in jail, as Ukrainian society should understand that violations of the law are punishable."

Vice Prime Minister for Administrative and Territorial Reform Roman Bezsmertnyi, 39, said on February 17 that the entire complex of problems relating to administrative and administrative-territorial reforms should be resolved before the 2006 parliamentary elections.

According to Mr. Bezsmertnyi, administrative reform's first stage is over, and Ukraine is poised for the reform's second phase. The first stage's gist, he noted, was to trim and optimize executive power bodies. This work, he said, has set the stage for the next step, which will focus on reforming local bodies of authority, whose activities and functions will be revised. The third stage of administrative reform, he continued, will deal with revising Ukraine's territorial divisions, while the fourth and final stage will lay the legal foundation to support these processes, including amendments to the Constitution if necessary.

Mr. Bezsmertnyi explained that such reform is necessary due to the existing disproportion between the size of the territories, population figures and financial provisions. Mr. Bezsmertnyi said he believes the consequences of the reform can be eased by shifting powers in favor of local self-government.

Some political scientists have assessed Mr. Bezsmertnyi's initiative as an attempt to undermine those powers that opposed the Orange Revolution and thus deny them a chance to win the upcoming parliamentary election.

Mr. Bezsmertnyi is a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on State Structuring and Local Self-Government. From January 1997 through October 1999, and December 1999 through April 2002, he was the president's permanent representative in the Verkhovna Rada.

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