The upcoming presidential elections further aggravate the complicated problem of political reform. If the first steps toward the President-proposed changes are not taken before the Central Electoral Commission names the new head of state, the reform is sure to be shelved at least until 2006. This was the almost unanimous conclusion made by the participants of the “Prospects of Political Reform in Ukraine: Parliament, the President, and the Government” roundtable initiated by the European Institute of Political Culture. The following experts share their opinion on the meaning and goals of the reform, as well as on what exact changes the political system must undergo.
Yury PAKHOMOV, Director, Institute of the World Economy and International Relations:
“Whatever obstacles may be on the way to political reform, it will sooner or later turn society around. I share the importance of such political reform aspects as a system of checks and balances. There is another aspect, though: all this can be done and enshrined in laws, but laws are not being obeyed in this country irrespective of whether ministers are subordinated to parliament or the president. The people should grow up to understand that laws should be obeyed, and the problem is to help them do so. From this angle, having a parliamentary or a presidential republic is a pressing issue. It is not accidental that authoritarian regimes are concentrated on one side of the globe and tough regimes which allow rule of law and a fair share of freedom and rights are to be found in the West. The presidential form, by contrast to the parliamentarian one, is possible in any country. The latter form must meet more stringent requirements set by both the elite and the public. A parliamentary or parliamentary- presidential republic is impossible without high political culture and structuralized parties with inherent ideologies. Particularities of a society must be taken into account. There are ethnicities inclined to rationalism — not only in the West but also in the East. The Confucian Orient is also sort of an analogue to Occidental rationalism. But there are also ethnicities genetically irrational in behavior. They are Eastern Slavs. I don’t mean irrationalism is worse. Darwin complained in the twilight of his lifetime that he had been a very emotional person in his younger years, but then, as he grew older, rationalism got the upper hand, which was tantamount to the loss of happiness.
Of course, Ukraine beats Russia as far as proximity to Western democracy is concerned. Yet, there are two effective forms of ruling the country: short-term authoritarianism and the supremacy of law. Ukraine has abandoned the former but not taken on the latter. It clearly suffers from regulative dystrophy: neither these nor those regulators. So this regulative weakness must be made up for with something. I think it would be best to make it up with presidential power. What essentially prevents Ukraine from building a parliamentary republic is the fact that our population is by and large demoralized. Hence, like people, like parliament. Against this backdrop, there still are some, although very few, chances to elect a good president.”
Volodymyr FESENKO, Director, Penta Center for Applied Political Research:
“It is very dangerous to claim that one must proceed from the popular will and public awareness. The point is that public awareness, both in Russia and Ukraine, simultaneously contains democratic and authoritarian values, intentions and wishes. This awareness is ambivalent. If the political elite satisfies the authoritarian demands of a part of the population, we will go down the road of authoritarianism. If it listens to the democratic part, we will march toward democracy. In other words, it is up to the elite to choose.
“Now about the forms of government. It seems to me that which of the forms is better is a question answered long ago. Every country establishes a form of government on the basis of its historical traditions, the current political situation, and the socio-cultural development of society.
“And about the reform. Almost all the speakers said the reform is aimed at establishing a more effective way of governance. I would agree to this, for there are indeed many fallacies in the way powers are distributed in the governmental triangle. But let us put the record straight: that the President has opted for a political reform and this is being discussed by various political forces shows that there are political reasons for the reform. Some political forces, now in power, are afraid that this power will be wrested by their rivals. Others, the opposition, are afraid that, whoever comes to power, the same regime will remain behind. Therefore, although the reasons are different, both sides fear that the winner will grab everything.
“I hear all the time in today’s debate that the president should have his powers cut short and parliament should have its role increased. But almost nobody pointed out the necessity of increasing the role of the Cabinet, the crucial element of this reform. The Cabinet should become the central, highest — and political at that — body of executive power. So it is in this direction that powers should be redistributed. Yet, checks and balances should be established in a way that will not weaken abruptly the institution of presidential authority. We talk very much about the European model and the increased role of parliament. But it is important to find out how it will increase. God forbid if we get a speaker-ruled or a quasi-Soviet republic instead of a strong government formed by parliament. This would be far worse than what we have now. Always remember the example of Moldova. So the motto ‘do no harm’ should be one of the fundamental principles of the political reform.
“In my opinion, the first thing to be reformed should be the election system. Firstly, because it is easier to come to terms over this issue: it requires 226, not 300, votes. Secondly, this is the first serious step towards changing the political system. A compromise should be reached over the proportional representation system. The next step should be an attempt to make minimal amendments to the Constitution because wide- embracing ones are sure to be voted down. Only then will it perhaps be possible to somewhat reconcile the interests of the now rivaling political players, and the political reform will get off to a start.”
Oleksandr LYTVYNENKO, Deputy Director, National Institute of Strategic Studies:
“The current political system has a lot of drawbacks. So the existing rules of the game require some correction. This should precisely be the subject of political reform. I want to emphasize that the political reform should not boil down to reforming the Constitution alone. What should the future reform be mainly aimed at? Firstly, parliament must have its powers strengthened. This can be done by granting Verkhovna Rada the right to form the government. On the other hand, such rights should not deprive the president of his powers. What needs to be clearly defined is the political responsibility of both the Cabinet and the parliament. The current Constitution enshrines no effective mechanisms of parliamentary responsibility for society. It is also necessary to reform the electoral law by introducing the proportional representation system. But the point is there are at least eight varieties of the proportional system in the world.
“If we view the reform as an unbiased large-scale political project, we must understand that it should be moving forward stage by stage. The reform cannot be a one-off act of making amendments to the Constitution; it should pass several stages. The main structural criterion for these stages is the fact that the next president and parliament should be vested with new powers.”
Vitaly PALAMARCHUK, department chair, National Institute of Strategic Studies:
“It seems to me none of the political forces taking part in the presidential campaign and hoping for success will manage to avoid the political reform question. Today, the vector of political transformations is aimed at reducing the powers of the president and increasing the powers of parliament. At the same time, I do not know even one political force, except the Communists and Socialists, who would favor making a virtual figurehead out of the president. In my view, factually reducing the powers of the president and keeping him up as a sufficiently leading figure is the quintessence of the political reform.”
Leonid KRAVCHUK, SDPU (O) faction leader:
“Political reform is now in a state of uncertainty. The Verkhovna Rada has only one draft law to discuss — the one moved by Oleksandr Moroz and a group of deputies, and the Constitutional Court has already passed a judgment on it. Another bill — proposed by the President — is also expected to go through the Constitutional Court. And should a third bill be drawn up on the basis of these two, it must also be screened by the Constitutional Court. This is why I am very pessimistic and do not believe we will be able to carry out this reform before the presidential elections. I am also sure that the one who will win the election and get the now existing powers will do all he can to foil the political reform. So the reform will remain as a sweet desire until 2006. Another indication of this is that the political forces which project their leaders as candidates for and possible winners in the 2004 elections are now slowing down the reform. In other words, society is pregnant with the reform, but the midwife, i.e., the political forces, has done nothing to induce the childbirth.
“The Moroz bill can only be regarded, in my opinion, as a direction of the political reform. For example, this draft law calls for the appointment of local authorities — this time by the Cabinet, not the President. But is there any guarantee that the Cabinet will be making no mistakes in forming the local government? The most important question in the formation of local authorities must be whether these are to be appointed or elected. If they are to be elected, it is democracy; if they are appointed, it is administrative injunction. By the logic that the people elect both parliament and the president, this seems to be the president’s prerogative. But this will inevitably form a president-controlled vertical structure. Therefore, if the president is stripped of some of his powers, which will be mechanistically transferred to the Cabinet or parliament, this will give no result. This will not fetch us a democratic system of government. There also are some other equally controversial points which should be settled in cold blood, proceeding from the democratic principles of government rather than from the maxim ‘it is bad just because it is done by the president and good just because it is done by VR or the Cabinet.’ For it is not about a concrete president and attitudes toward him but about creating a system of government under which any president, any parliament and cabinet would work as one whole. So if we want to bring the reform into play, we must couch it in legal political terms. We must discuss the negative and positive aspects of the already existing specific draft law. When the President proposes a bill of his own, we will be debating on it. Should he not do so, then it will not matter whether president X or Y wins. Even if X proves better than Y, this will be for a short time until he ‘grows feathers.’ Once in feathers, he will begin to show his tail.”
Oleh MEDVEDEV, political technologist:
“Any pattern of political reform in Ukraine must be based on the assumption that the political system should feature a sufficiently influential president with powers not so broad as now but still strong enough to enable him to perform the function of a political arbiter between the opposed political forces. The point is, we will not manage to build overnight a stable parliamentary system with the trouble-free mechanisms of the reconciliation of interests. In the absence of such an arbiter inside the Ukrainian political system, our politicians will undoubtedly be appealing to Moscow and consider the Russian president as the supreme arbiter in their disputes. We have quite a few examples of the existence and death of many democracies located next to the autocratic Moscow — starting with Great Novgorod, Zaporizhian Sich, Rzechpospolita, and ending with the post-World War II people’s democracies and bourgeois democratic regimes in Central Europe. I do not mean that Russia is evil. It is an objective phenomenon, the result of the concentration of power in a big state. There must be a law of objective competition under which weak democracies are doomed to death if situated next to such giants as Russia. So, when modeling the political reform, we must take this law into account. If we do not have a strong president, another country’s president will be the supreme arbiter in a formally independent Ukraine.
“Now, about the election of governors. We must thoroughly analyze the experience of Russia where governors have been elected since 1993. And although Putin has not abolished, contrary to many expectations, the institution of elected governors, he has trimmed it down to a large extent. Firstly, he instituted the office of seven ‘governor-generals.’ Secondly, gubernatorial elections now look like an insufficiently fair referendum to enable the electorate of a certain region to confirm in office the candidate hand-picked by Moscow. Russia tackled this problem from the angle of territorial integrity. The point is that when governors were granted too many rights, they not always made good use of these rights. Things went so far that each region had foreign policy goals of its own. Yet, this is a lesser evil for Russia than for Ukraine because Russia does not border even on one state that could be a center of gravitation for certain regions. If governors were to be elected in Ukraine, the policy of the eastern Ukrainian regions would differ greatly from that of the Kyiv center. This would eventually create a situation similar to that in Canada, where many provinces maintain stronger political and economic ties with the US than with the other Canadian regions. This is why Russian political scientists take a rosy view of the election of Ukrainian governors, for this would, first of all, paralyze the central control of the regions. Russia will undoubtedly take advantage of this situation, and Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk will in fact be administered from Moscow rather than from Kyiv. All this does not mean rejecting the political reform, but the latter factor should be taken into account.”
