The Central Electoral Commission (CEC) of the Crimea has again summed up the results of elections in the 39th electoral district. Since the local commission confirmed its earlier ruling that the election was void, CEC members have now at lest overruled the decision and recognized Liudmyla Denysova as legitimately elected. However, CEC chairman Ivan Poliakov said bluntly that Ms. Denysova would be able to occupy her seat only if she waived her ministerial office in the Serhiy Kunitsyn government. In any case, a new scandal seems to be erupting in Simferopol over this issue.
Chairman of the Crimean Council of Ministers Kunitsyn said during a governmental meeting the week before last that he learned that “Deputy Speaker of Parliament Yuri Kornilov had moved to put the item ‘On the Early Waiving of the Deputy Status by Government Members’ on the September session’s agenda. As is known, Article 5 of the Ukrainian law on the Supreme Council of the Crimea, passed by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and signed by the President in 1998, provides that “deputies of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic Crimea (ARC) shall not simultaneously be members of the ARC Council of Ministers, representatives of the President in the ARC, or have any other representative mandate.” Under this article, attempts were once made to expel Deputy Vasyl Kiseliov, representative of the President in Crimea, but without apparent success. Mr. Kiseliov then advanced a counterargument that the clause on separation of the legislative and executive powers only applies to People’s Deputies of Ukraine and the government of Ukraine as stipulated in the Constitution of Ukraine. The Crimean Supreme Council is only a representative, not legislative, body, and, in his opinion, the aforementioned article of the law violates the Constitution of Ukraine. On these grounds, the President of Ukraine referred the matter, also in 1998, to the Constitutional Court, but the latter has not yet given its decision on the conflict. For this reason, the Crimean parliament believes, Article 5 is fully valid.
Thus, the very fact of putting this question on the agenda casts doubt on the parliamentary status of eight persons: Mr. Kunitsyn himself; his deputies Viktor Antypenko; Serhiy Velizhansky; Lentun Bezaziyev; the current representative of the President in Crimea, Anatoly Korniychuk; Minister Mykhailo Holubiev; as well as again Vasyl Kiseliov, now acting deputy head of government, and Minister of Finance Denysova who, the CEC insists, will get her parliamentary seat only when she resigns from the government.
Simultaneously, Crimean observers doubt whether the Crimea Supreme Council itself has the right to solve the problem of denying the deputies of their seats. Mr. Kunitsyn, for instance, says that his analysis of applicable laws confirms that Article 5 does not comply with the Constitution of Ukraine: there are conclusions to this effect from both the Ministry of Justice and the legal department of the Presidential Administration.
Meanwhile, there is no doubt that the question of the status of eight Crimean Deputies is of the strategic importance for Crimean Speaker Leonid Hrach. First, the dubious Deputies include only two representatives of his camp, Communists Mykhailo Holubiev and Lentun Bezaziyev, who can be sacrificed in order to knock five or six votes out of Mr. Kunitsyn’s camp. Secondly, the question was put on the September agenda, while, as is known, the decision on government resignation was deferred until October 1 and many decisions might have to be made under conditions of critical voting, when each vote is worth a fortune. Undoubtedly, the situation will again require the President to intervene, for experience shows that the almost year-long war between the Crimean parliament and government will never end by itself because of active assaults on the government by the parliamentary speaker. Mr. Hrach’s position is that, as he said in an interview with Part.org.ua, an Internet publication, the government has already been dismissed since October 1, and the only question is “how many members of this government, perhaps including Serhiy Kunitsyn himself, may enter the newly-formed government. Everything depends on what kind of political and behavioral steps they are taking today.” Commenting on this situation for the same Internet publication, People’s Deputy Refat Chubarov said, “This is overt blackmail by Leonid Hrach.” First, it is common knowledge that the decision on the dismissal of the Crimean government (officially, due to no confidence) was postponed until October 1 in order, as was said, to settle a legal dispute arising from the conflicting norms of different laws, rather than give the government a chance to work until the autumn. Ms. Denysova filed a petition to the CEC the Sunday before last, demanding that she be given the parliament membership card because the commission has already recognized her as elected. However, she told journalists, “There is practically no chance for a positive solution of this problem because the Supreme Council of the Crimea decided to wait for October 1 in order to declare the government dismissed.”
Mr. Chubarov also said, “The Majlis (Crimean Tatar representative body — Ed.) has pleaded with the President, as guarantor of the Constitution of Ukraine, to take the necessary steps stipulated by the Constitution to settle this situation.”
