There is a glimmer of a hope that Ukraine’s MPs will finally figure out the crisis and the elections on Tuesday. A parliamentary task force is supposed to draw up a single bill on minimizing the impact of the global financial crisis on the Ukrainian economy instead of the previously proposed six bills.
Speaker Arsenii Yatseniuk emphasized last Friday that parliamentarians should vote seriously on this matter, otherwise the IMF will not give Ukraine even one cent. The IMF has set aside $150 billion for the neediest countries, including Ukraine, which is slated to receive $14 billion.
To tell the truth, no one knows how successful and constructive the work of this task force will be. The NU-NS is predicting maliciously that there will be no “consolidated anti-crisis bill.”
“I am pessimistic about the performance of this task force. If a compromise were truly necessary, it could have been reached yesterday, The Day before yesterday, or today,” Ksenia Liapina said.
To be fair, there are ample grounds for making such a pessimistic forecast: last Friday MPs were accusing each other of incompetence and lack of professionalism. Parliamentarians from the Party of Regions were saying that it was a lobbyist bill and accused the Cabinet of Ministers of seeking to establish an economic dictatorship.
Meanwhile, the BYuT says that the Party of Regions’ alternative package can hardly be called a document at all.
“Today we received an anti-crisis package from the Party of Regions, which consists of one page with two items listing measures to be adopted and three pages of an explanatory note,” the BYuT’s Ostap Semerak told The Day.
“This is not a document at all but a tip on how to steal 40 billion hryvnias from the state budget. It makes me laugh that the opposition managed to issue a document with just two items after being in session for so long. There’s nothing to discuss here.”
But according to Taras Chornovil, who no longer belongs to any party, the government’s bill is also far from ideal.
“I am not thrilled with the BYuT’s document. I thing they wrote it ‘off the cuff.’ They wrote it, fully aware that it will not go through because there are many things there, even things that are unconstitutional. For example, banks can seize property without a court ruling. If there are grounds for a first reading, there are none for a second one,” he said.
Chornovil was probably referring to the cabinet’s proposal to make changes to Article 20, “On the Return of Collateral,” of the law “On Collateral. It is about allowing banks to deprive borrowers of property that was offered to banks as security, and the amendment would allow banks to do this without any sort of judicial procedures or court rulings.
The Cabinet of Ministers bans extra-judicial “arbitrariness” with respect to state-run businesses. In other words, only individuals (natural persons), private entrepreneurs, and owners of non-state-run businesses can suffer out of court because of late loan payments. We can only hope that the task force finishes working on this issue this weekend.
As for the elections, it is clear they will not be held either on Dec. 14 or 21. Even Dec. 28 is a problematic date. For the time being, “the Tymoshenko plan” is still working, meaning more delays are ahead.
