The drafters of the bill “On the Cabinet of Ministers” have requested the president to submit this document for urgent parliamentary discussion, but the head of state is in no hurry.
For the eighth time in the last ten years the government is trying to draft a bill on the Cabinet of Ministers, in which every detail of its work is laid out. The previous seven attempts were foiled by then President Leonid Kuchma’s veto. This time the bill has passed every stage of discussion - three times in the government and then in working groups that included MPs from all factions. This is why the drafters insist that Viktor Yushchenko urgently submit the bill to the Verkhovna Rada. A few days ago Vice-Premier Dmytro Tabachnyk, Minister of Justice Roman Zvarych, and First Deputy Minister without Portfolio Oleksandr Lavrynovych informed journalists about some new features in the current bill on the Cabinet of Ministers.
The authors emphasize that the new bill is fully in line with the constitutional provisions on the government’s duties and is a logical continuation of the political reform. It is also an important step toward separating politics from statecraft.
“This is the first step toward the separation of a ministry’s political functions from administrative ones. We insist on suggesting that the president urgently submit the bill to the Verkhovna Rada on and hope that parliament makes the right decision,” said the justice minister.
The new features of the latest bill include a mandatory oath for ministers, joint responsibility of the cabinet as a collective body, and ministers’ personal political responsibility for the state of affairs in their respective ministries. The Cabinet of Ministers is also being vested with the right to repeal acts of ministries and local administrations.
In all likelihood, the latter provision will be one of the most controversial for the head of state, who, in the event that the bill is voted into law, will lose his authority to control the way regional administration chairpersons follow his instructions. In addition, the bill still leaves a number of unresolved points with respect to the delimitation of powers between the Cabinet of Ministers and the president. The Constitutional Court is now examining the cabinet’s two queries about the appointment procedure for the prime minister and other ministers, as well as the question on whether it is mandatory for the cabinet to countersign the president’s decrees.
“The Constitutional Court should provide an unambiguous explanation of how and under what rigid pattern the head of government is to be proposed and appointed, so that we don’t have a situation like the one we had last summer,” says Lavrynovych, First Deputy Minister without Portfolio.
The president ardently supports the introduction to the cabinet of the institution of state secretaries, a proposal not included in the new bill. Meanwhile, state secretaries were to be assigned the role of genuine civil servants, who remain in office even after a minister resigns or is dismissed. But the clause on state secretaries was deleted from the cabinet bill.
In all probability, the Guarantor of the Constitution will not submit the bill “On the Cabinet of Ministers” to the Verkhovna Rada before the Constitutional Court passes a judgment on the cabinet’s queries. The justice minister believes that the president will most likely want to update the document he has received from the cabinet. Among other things, he may add a clause on the institution of state secretaries.
Regarding this question, Yushchenko may count on support from the Our Ukraine faction whose member, Mykola Katerynchuk, has already said that the government-sponsored bill is not well-balanced. “Changing the political structure of parliament is directly dependent on the cabinet lineup,” the MP says, “so the institution of state secretaries who would remain in their offices even if the cabinet changes its political face is extremely important.”
Vice-Premier Dmytro Tabachnyk is taking a radically different stance on this matter. In his view, Ukraine “has rather unpleasant experience of the coexistence of ministers and state secretaries.”
For this reason, when the cabinet was discussing the question of instituting the post of state secretary, the proposal was almost unanimously rejected by all government members “irrespective of their political leanings.”
“All ministers from the Party of Regions, Our Ukraine, the socialists and the communists unanimously spoke out against this provision,” Tabachnyk said.
“We could not ignore this consolidated opinion, so we suggested that the question of separation between the civil service and political offices be finalized in the bills ‘On the Civil Service’ and ‘On Ministries and Other Central Bodies of Power,’” he noted.
What may incur the president’s wrath is Item 2 of Chapter 29, which states that officials of the National Security and Defense Council, the presidential staff, and other advisory and auxiliary services instituted by the president, may not issue instructions to the cabinet and its members or interfere in their activities.
As far as perks are concerned, ministers can now count not only on staff cars but housing, but only while they work in the cabinet—unless President Yushchenko vetoes the bill. They will also have to part with their lifetime civil servant status.
The bill drafters are predicting a thorny path for their brainchild to parliamentary approval. They do not rule out another, eighth, veto - this time by Yushchenko. “I am sincerely trying to avert a veto. I wish there would be a law. But there’s no denying that I participated in the previous seven vetoes. I am aware that there is certain interest in and opportunities for influencing the executive branch — perhaps not so much the president as the people who assist him in office,” Lavrynovych says.
INCIDENTALLY
President Viktor Yushchenko is planning to submit his own version of the bill “On the Cabinet of Ministers” to the Verkhovna Rada, the president’s advisor Ihor Koliushko said at a briefing last Wednesday.
He said that the version drawn up by the government does not take into account most of the objections raised by the presidential staff and that “the bill has been emasculated of all reform content.” Some clauses run counter to the Constitution of Ukraine, including Part 2 of Article 9, which states that the president has to submit candidates for the ministers of defense and foreign affairs at the proposal of the coalition of parliamentary factions. Koliushko noted that this approach does not comply with Ukraine’s Constitution, particularly Item 10 of Article 106, which states that the proposal of candidates for the ministers of defense and foreign affairs is the exclusive prerogative of the president.
Koliushko also said that Part 9 of Article 25 does not comply with the constitutional provision that empowers the president and chairpersons of regional administrations to repeal acts of city and village administrations.
The president’s adviser also pointed out other flaws of the government-sponsored bill: the exclusion of the provision on ministerial state secretaries, which, in the presidential staff’s opinion, will hinder the main objective of this law - the formation of a viable government capable of pursuing effective state policies.
The bill also says nothing about the president’s power to halt the cabinet’s acts, although, according to Koliushko, it is this very law that is supposed to reveal this mechanism. Nor does the bill include a provision on the possibility of legal actions against governmental acts.
In addition, the cabinet bill does not explain the procedure of countersigning the president’s acts by the prime minister and the minister responsible for enforcing the act, which creates obstacles for the enforcement of Part 4, Article 106, of the Constitution of Ukraine.
Koliushko declared that the presidential staff passed a decision to update the bill that was drafted in July 2006 and has advised the president to use his constitutional right to submit it to parliament. He added that this is stipulated in the Declaration of National Unity. “The rule says that it is always difficult to reform yourself,” the president’s advisor noted.
Koliushko said later that the text of the draft bill is being prepared with the participation of Arsenii Yatseniuk, First Deputy Chief of the Presidential Staff. It plans to complete the work by the end of the week, submit the document for the president’s signature the following week, and then submit it to parliament.
