What will come of the budget bill is still anyone’s guess. Speaker Ivan Pliushch said on October 19 that the vote was adjourned until November 2 because of a great many critical remarks and proposals, as well as because the internal budget relationships problem remained unsolved. Mr. Pliushch added that he had contacted the leaders of factions and groups to please reach an agreement on these issues and refrain from putting the budget bill to the vote. On last Wednesday night the SDPU(o), Yabluko, Greens, and NDP faction spokesmen, attending a conference with the parliamentary majority, Premier, and President, declared they were resolutely opposed to the bill. Afterward, however, some of the Yabluko lawmakers took back their objections.
Incidentally, President Kuchma, commenting on Wednesday’s conference with the parliamentary majority, stressed that he did not intend to convince the People’s Deputies to “pass the budget bill today.” He said they had a frank exchange of views and that he was not satisfied by the bill’s inflation index and by lack of coordination with regard to the problem with internal budget relationships, reports Interfax Ukraine.
According to Communist Heorhy Kriuchkov, “It became clear on Wednesday that the budget bill would fail if put to a vote in the first reading. This would mean the end of the [parliamentary] majority as a great attainment of the so-called velvet revolution. For this reason adjourning the vote was the only alternative and it was applied.” Mr. Kriuchkov believes that “the situation is aggravated by the fact that some of the Right legislators said they would vote for the budget bill if Yuliya Tymoshenko was fired; others claimed they would tear the majority apart if she had to go. This is more evidence that the parliamentary majority is actually nonexistent.”
‘The vote does not always follow an economically logical course,” says Oleksandr Riabchenko of the Greens. “Everybody understands that the budget bill is bad, yet no worse than all the previous ones... The Deputies will attack it over and over, then vote for it in the end. It’s a bad tradition. Eventually, we must pass a normal budget bill. Hence I think that they will vote for the budget before January 1, maybe even in December.”
Ukrainian Finance Minister Ihor Mitiukov told the conference that there are a number of budget clauses, relating primarily to internal budget relationships, that have to be revised. He agreed that the vote on the bill should be adjourned and that the document had to be resubmitted for a repeated first reading.
