The new fourth Verkhovna Rada of independent Ukraine has undergone marked changes over the month since its first plenary session. The last week saw United Ukraine transforming — explicitly rather than implicitly — from a faction into, to put it diplomatically, an interparty association. Mykola Onyshchuk, first deputy chair of the Law Committee, told journalists that the future members of this association would couch their relations in an agreement that envisages “a coordination and joint action mechanism” and lays down the rights and duties of each participant. In the opinion of Labor Ukraine leader Serhiy Tyhypko, leaders of all the constituent factions can preside over the coalition by turns.
Andriy Kliuyev, chairman of the parliamentary committee on fuel and energy, told the press that 55 to 60 deputies would join the Party of the Regions faction, while Tyhypko announced that agreement had been reached with forty parliament members on entering this faction. About 25 deputies agreed to become members of the Agrarian Party (APU) faction, APU leader Mykhailo Hladiy said. Another 27 United Ukraine members are ready to join the People’s Democratic Party (NDP) faction if what one of the party leaders Anatoly Tolstoukhov says is right (earlier, NDP leader Valery Pustovoitenko spoke about three and a half to four dozen hands). Some information suggests Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh’s Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs is also studying the possibility of forming a faction of its own.
About twenty deputies, according to first vice chairman of the industrial policy committee Vadym Hurov, can form — within United Ukraine — a faction “lobbying the interests of Ukrainian industry,” with a nucleus consisting of territorial deputies from Dnipropetrovsk and Luhansk oblasts. Odesa-based deputies are also trying to leave the joint chorus and form an ensemble of their own, Ihor Reznik (who recently left, together with some others from United Ukraine) told The Day.
That the plans to dismember United Ukraine have been nurtured for a long time was also indirectly confirmed by the distribution of parliamentary portfolios: out of the four committees taken over by the fraction, one headed by Valery Pustovoitenko will go to the NDP faction, one on fuel and energy, headed by Mr. Kliuyev to the Party of Regions faction, and at least one led by Dmytro Tabachnyk to Labor Ukraine. The thirteen portfolios of the committee first vice chairmen are likely to suffice for all because none of the United Ukraine members is supposed to be left untended. Yet, United Ukraine leader Volodymyr Lytvyn does not think the fraction is disintegrating. The trouble allegedly is that the Our Ukraine bloc’s parties, including the two Rukh splinters and Solidarity, want to be given premises for “productive and speedy work,” as do the parties of the United Ukraine bloc. Therefore, according to Mr. Lytvyn, “the only point is a more effective and goal-oriented organization of work.”
Incidentally, Verkhovna Rada Vice Speaker Oleksandr Zinchenko thinks these metamorphoses are “quite a natural process.” In his opinion, United Ukraine “was absolutely right to stave off confrontations between individual subjects of the bloc in the name of achieving a great result.” Now, Mr. Zinchenko told The Day, “this kind of great result” consists in “letting individual elements be heard.”
Undoubtedly, following the disintegration of the “great factions,” the party structure of the current parliament is more clearly discernible and the taste of each of the components is more obvious, which is good in itself. On the other hand, as we remember, the electorate voted on March 31 for the For United Ukraine bloc, not for the individual parties Labor Ukraine, NDP, the Party of Regions, etc., each absent from ballots.
Thus, in the immediate future, there will be not six but twice as many factions in Verkhovna Rada. Naturally, this will not stem the tide of parliamentary disintegration. Also dreaming about factions of their own are former Speaker Ivan Pliushch and former Vice Speaker Stepan Havrysh. This faction, according to Mr. Havrysh, might incorporate about fifteen deputies, including “big business representatives who failed to find a proper place in the megafactions.” What about 450 factions as a result?
The other “megafaction,” Our Ukraine, is still holding out. Yet, it also abounds in young ambitious party leaders. As a proverb goes, they also have voice and want to sing. Incidentally, the torments of Rukh leader Yury Kostenko can evoke tears even from the most heartless cynic: today the Rukh leader lays it on the line to journalists that he does not rule out division of Our Ukraine into several groups, tomorrow he assures the wordsmiths that his fraction’s members will be loyal to one another until, yes, until the oncoming presidential elections.
What arouses some concern in all this turmoil is a visible tendency that parliament is being structured not so much on a party-based as on the regional and figuratively speaking industrial lines or, in simpler terms, by lobbies. It looks like the notion fraction is being replaced in this country by the notion of lobby, while politics (translated from Greek, public and state affairs) rather becomes a means to achieve a corporative goal.
It is no accident that the president has cautioned people’s deputies against the absurdity of forming factions on the regional basis alone. Otherwise, if this principle is upheld, we will have party named for Odesa, Kherson, Zhmerynka, et al., thus sparing ourselves the trouble of choosing a corresponding ideology. And the parliament will hear debates not between Left and Right, liberals and conservatives, but between ports and factories, mines and blast furnaces, exporters and importers, etc.
But, all this apart, the link that holds a deputy with the brand name under which he was elected (and, hence, with his campaign promises) still remains on the blink. So fifteen or so factions and 550 defections from one of them to another (as it was in the previous parliament) is no limit at all. What can put the situation straight is lawmaking, rather than all kinds of joint action agreements.
