THE 'NEW' VERKHOVNA RADA: HOW NEW?
By Markian Bilynskyj

The following article takes a look at the likely nature of the next Ukrainian parliament based on the dynamics of the current election campaign and political reforms in Ukraine.
________________________________________________________________________

The Verkhovna Rada's recent 'dismissal' of the Yekhanurov government and its subsequent confrontation with President Yushchenko signaled the opening salvo in what promises to be a series of stand-offs stemming from the redistribution of political authority - commonly referred to as constitutional or political reforms - that commenced on January 1. The situation is further aggravated by the highly charged atmosphere surrounding March elections to a more powerful parliament and, most importantly, by the absence of a fully functioning Constitutional Court hamstrung by the Rada's deliberate refusal to vote on its quota of appointments and swear in the president's nominees.

The debate over the reforms has focused almost exclusively on the powers that will accrue to the Rada upon their full adoption and the implications for executive legislative relations. Virtually no attention, however, has been paid to whether the Verkhovna Rada as an institution can be trusted with - or, more bluntly, is fit - to exercise its new, enhanced role. Unfortunately, the answer is far from encouraging. Indeed, rather than consolidating the Rada's representative and legislative responsibilities along a more democratic path of development, as the advocates of political reforms argue, the changes might even reinforce some of the worst characteristics and practices the Rada has accumulated in the fifteen years since Ukraine's independence.

During the latter part of the Kuchma era the Rada was often referred to (not only by the then opposition) as a bulwark of democracy against the confused authoritarianism pursued by the presidential Administration. This kind of judgment was both appropriate and self-evident in the context of a raw power confrontation with a presidency prone to rather arbitrary interpretations of democratic procedures. However, the advent of a new Administration - which, despite some serious shortcomings in other areas, appears willing to live with the inconvenience democratic scrutiny and procedure entails - has inevitably brought a change of both context and perspective. This reveals (even confirms) that the terms Rada, democracy, and accountability correspond only in a broad, generic sense and that upon closer examination there are some inherent flaws that continue to disfigure this theoretically most democratic, and hence accountable, of political institutions. Prominent in this regard are issues of composition, accountability, and procedure.

Proponents of a fully proportional system of parliamentary elections argued, inter alia, that this new model - beginning with the abolition of majoritarian constituencies that were notoriously at the mercy of moneyed interests, and continuing through the party convention stage - would broaden popular participation in the process of party list creation. This development would help finally to identify and separate those individuals more interested in pursuing their personal interests under parliamentary immunity from those with a genuine interest in the less materially rewarding pursuit of professional law-making. In other words, business would finally be separated from politics and the result would be a Rada finally devoted to professional, publicly accountable legislating.

Unfortunately, what could never have been more than a desired outcome was all too often presented almost as an axiom. And since any kinds of political reforms cannot occur independently of their socio-economic context, the first results of the political reforms appear to simply validate the enduring wisdom of that popular "Chernomyrdism" (accepted into the contemporary Ukrainian lexicon almost as an expression of resignation): "Khoteli kak luchshe a poluchylos' kak vsiegda." (They/we wanted things to be better but they turned out just the same.)

Ukrainian political parties in general, even in the post-Orange environment, continue to betray their genesis as special interest vehicles with limited appeal to a broader public. Personalities therefore continue to predominate over policies. The parties expend considerable resources and effort in order to broaden their legitimacy and bolster their declared democratic credentials but they remain predominantly top-down structures overwhelmingly subservient to the needs of their Kyiv-based leadership.

Not surprisingly, then, as a rule the party lists for the principal contenders in the March Rada elections reveal a predominance of Kyiv-based figures augmented by local elites seeking to redefine and align themselves with today's leading players in various blocs. Rada Chairman Volodymyr Lytvyn's bloc perhaps offers the best example of this trend, while several of the parties running under various shades of orange have also happily accommodated individuals and groups of individuals from the regions who were quite clearly and actively in the pro-Kuchma camp in that part of their lists that polls suggest will make it into parliament.

Moreover, according to official statistics representatives of business (at 30%) form the largest group of candidates to the Verkhovna Rada, with educators, (8.5%) coming a distant second. This proportion is similar to 2002 when it was hoped, in vain as it turned out, that a Rada dominated by the business community would work towards adopting progressive legislation. (Not that business and crime are always linked in Ukraine, but there are all sorts of rumors and estimates in circulation regarding the numbers of candidates running for representative office, particularly at the local level, suspected of criminal activity in the business sphere. However, the facts are almost an irrelevance in view of the powerful popular perception, fueled by many candidates themselves, of an enduring link between business, crime, and politics.) The presence, for example, of Ukraine's wealthiest businessman, Renat Akhmetov, at the top of the Party of Regions list does not suggest that things will be any better this time around. (Plain amusing, on the other hand, is the presence of Andriy Derkach, a businessman who obviously had a change of mind about running for the Rada again, in the Socialist Party's list; amusing, because Mr. Derkach's media played a leading role in the Kuchma regime's attempts to discredit Socialist leader Oleksandr Moroz during the "Kuchmagate" scandal.) Under normal circumstances, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with successful businessmen running for public office. However, the enduring and clear lack of consensus among Ukraine's political elites over what constitutes the national interest means that individual and narrow corporate interests will continue to predominate. The composition of the new Rada will simply not provide the critical mass needed to change the trajectory of its evolution from essentially an exclusive forum for brokering business deals and establishing preferential access to the budgetary and privatization processes to one genuinely concerned with a broader, common good.

With respect to accountability, the fact that the Rada is to be elected on a proportional basis means that even the often all too formal, organic link between individual deputies and constituents provided by the majoritarian system will be further weakened. Several parties have stated that they will compensate by dividing the country into areas of responsibility. Yet it is difficult to imagine a party or bloc with the minimum fifteen Rada deputies the 3% vote threshold provides offering anything remotely resembling effective representation. The Rada's representative responsibilities (and by extension accountability), never a high priority, are therefore in danger of withering away. The envisioned reforms could make the Rada a more effective and efficient legislative body (the so-called imperative mandate barring deputies migrating between re is factions is being touted as a means for enforcing voting discipline); but, with its representative imperative effectively undermined, in whose interests?

If political reforms do not augur well for a change in composition and representation the outlook is no better with respect to procedure. It is a deeply ingrained and ironic aspect of the Rada's operational culture that Ukraine's primary law-making body refuses to be governed by its own regulations; regulations that, by extension, provide the key point of reference for civil society groups interested in exercising their legitimate role of monitoring the Rada. The rehlament, or regulations, have languished in draft-law form since 1996 and only passed the first reading in late 1999. In the current political reforms package, the 1996 constitutional requirement that the rehlament be an actual law rather than a resolution is dropped. A case can be made that in making this change, the Rada is in fact aligning itself with international practice. However, based on the sometimes mind-boggling abuses to which the rehlament has been subjected over the years, a strong case can be made that the Verkhovna Rada, at this stage of its development, must be regulated by law not resolution if it is finally to develop as a genuinely transparent and accountable institution. However, that the new Rada will subordinate the interests of the individual deputies for the sake of the institution's long-term development is highly unlikely because such a move would severely fence in and dilute the authority of parliamentary party and faction leaders; in other words, the authority of those very political actors advocating political reforms in the first place.

One of the most egregious abuses, concerning the voting process, appears to have seeped into the very marrow of Rada procedure. Arguably the most responsible function a representative and legislator is called upon to perform is the act by which popular will is codified into law. The brazen extent to which the process is manipulated - by all political forces - means that it is possible to talk of institutionalized abuse. A strong case can be made that barely a handful of legislation has been adopted by the Verkhovna Rada since independence on the basis of the rehlament's one-person-one-vote requirement. Much more frequently, often in full view of TV cameras, voting numbers have been recorded that bear no resemblance to actual attendance in the plenary hall. The difference is explained by deputies - so-called "piano players" - running along the empty rows and voting with the cards of their absent colleagues. The prevalence of this behavior is further evidence that many deputies see their formal responsibilities as something of an inconvenience as they pursue their personal interests.

In late December, after a bitter confrontation with the government and within the parliament itself, the Rada adopted the 2006 budget by just one vote. The following day, Deputy Viktor Kirilov informed Chairman Lytvyn that while his card had voted he did not because he was away on constituency business. Under normal circumstances the chairman could - even should - have proposed a motion, as requested by Mr. Kirilov, authorizing the appropriate committee to investigate the matter, even if this meant a new vote on the budget. Mr. Lytvyn's response, however, ignored this apparently clear violation of the rehlament and replied that procedure did not provide for a retroactive withdrawl of a deputy's vote. The matter was then conveniently forgotten. Who needs regulations when power can be exercised so arbitrarily, shamelessly - and with little or no consequence?

There is currently little reason to believe that the Rada elected next month will in any significant way be an improvement on its predecessor(s). Once in office, too many individual deputies will likely succumb to and (even happily) perpetuate the existing ingrained, anti-democratic corporate culture in pursuit of their narrow personal or group interests. Volumes of campaign rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, accountability and transparency are and always have been considered inconveniences to be avoided, the rehlament a document to be observed only in the breach.

Accumulated arbitrary abuses and a perceived disdain for popular will by the presidency were the proximate causes of the Orange Revolution. At the time, it was popular to anticipate the forthcoming Rada elections as complementary to the presidential elections, a kind of "stage-two" litmus test regarding the prospects for the eventual consolidation of Ukrainian democracy throughout all branches of government. Given the powerful dynamics working against the Rada reforming itself it might take a similar - although highly unlikely - popular expression of no-confidence to make the Rada finally take seriously its role as the principal Ukrainian representative and legislative body.
________________________________________________________________________

Markian Bilynskyj is the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation's Vice President and Director of Field Operations in Ukraine. Mr. Bilynskyj may be contacted at mib@usukraine.kiev.ua.

The views expressed by Mr. Bilynskyj are his own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation.

Established in 1991, the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation's mission is to facilitate democratic development, encourage free market reform, and enhance human rights in Ukraine. For more information about the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation's work, please visit www.usukraine.org.