Until a few days ago, Ukrainian parliamentarians were working in their districts. The summer break has now begun. But there is a risk that parliament’s summer vacations will be interrupted before even getting off the ground.
The members of the BYuT faction say that they have already collected signatures from nearly 150 MPs, the required number for convening an extraordinary session of the Verkhovna Rada. Both the government and the Presidential Secretariat have spoken about the need to conduct an extraordinary parliamentary session. Both the head of state and the head of the Cabinet of Ministers are convinced that Ukraine’s MPs should interrupt their vacations in order to enact the amendments to Ukraine’s main financial document - the budget.
Andrii Honcharuk, the deputy head of the Presidential Secretariat, outlined the president’s budgetary position in the following way. “The president demands and even insists on conducting an extraordinary session of parliament. The budget committee can create a single draft law out of the two drafts laws: the governmental one and the presidential one.”
The BYuT camp has a different opinion. “The president should withdraw his draft law. Only in this case will it be possible to hold an extraordinary session of the Verkhovna Rada,” said BYuT member Andrii Kozhemiakin, adding that “parliamentarians do not have a problem with the budget but ordinary people do.”
The Orange faction NU-NS claims that President Yushchenko is worried precisely about average Ukrainians and is therefore demanding that the BYuT consider all his remarks about the budget and his amendments. NU-NS leader Viacheslav Kyrylenko says that the budget amendments should not be the personal document of the prime minister but the product of the joint activity of the president, the government, and the ruling coalition.
A few weeks ago the members of the coalition killed the budget question. The government’s draft law gained 216 of the required votes. Ivan Pliushch, Vladyslav Kaskiv, Yurii But, Mykola Kulchynsky, and Ihor Rybakov, the BYuT member who recently announced that he is leaving the coalition, abstained. Only 58 deputies voted for the presidential budget draft law (the full complement of the BYuT ignored it, and not even all the representatives of the NU-NS voted).
Before supporting the idea of convening an extraordinary session of parliament, Tymoshenko pointed the finger at those who are responsible for the lack of a state budget: the MPs from the United Center Party. “The amendments to the budget would have been adopted if the newly- created United Center Party had voted. But since they sabotaged the budget process, we have not approved the budget. Unfortunately, mood of ‘the worse it is, the better’ in the opposition factions won out over the slogans of serving the people.”
Bankova Street issued a swift and sharp reaction to the irate statements of the head of the Cabinet of Ministers. But the Presidential Secretariat ignored the budget question and instead emphasized something else. “The concealed part of many of the prime minister’s statements is proof that there is a clear conflict between Yulia Tymoshenko, the head of the government, who should have common positions with the president, and Yulia Tymoshenko the politician, who has obvious claims to the state’s highest office and who neglects the nation’s interests in order to attain her goal,” said Viktor Baloha, head of the Presidential Secretariat.
Noting that “Baloha’s nonsensical statements never have a grain of rationality,” Tymoshenko sent a clear signal to Viktor Yushchenko. “I don’t exclude the possibility that a single candidate will be put forward during the presidential elections. This is not a question of a struggle for power; there will be enough power for everybody,” the prime minister said.
This latest exchange of pleasantries once again proves that the 2010 presidential elections are behind the current political conflicts, and at any time each of the sides may trip up the opponent and agree to the most incredible alliances for the sake of this goal.
A word about alliances is in order here. In view of the discussions about the need to convene an extraordinary session of the Verkhovna Rada, which have escalated in recent weeks, as well as the lack of a single budget denominator in the BYuT and NU-NS coalition, lobby chatter has it that Prime Minister Tymoshenko is looking for votes for its budget draft law in other factions: the Communist Party, Lytvyn’s bloc, and the Party of Regions.
It is no secret that the communists and the members of Lytvyn’s bloc have often bailed out Tymoshenko during voting for important draft laws, and it is clear that the prime minister will be the winner of the current budget derby, proving to MPs, ordinary Ukrainians and, most importantly, the international community, that it is not just Our Ukraine that is formulating policies.
Meanwhile, the parliamentarians responded in different ways to the demands of the state leaders to hold an extraordinary session of parliament. Whereas the members of the coalition expressed their readiness to assemble at any time, the members of the opposition are turning up their noses. If such a session is convened, the Party of Regions will insist on considering the package of social draft laws as a top priority, said Hanna Herman. “Our leader is in place. None of us has received any signal for an extraordinary session.”
Communist MP Oleksandr Holub said that an extraordinary session of parliament is unlikely, but he does not exclude the possibility that the CPU will take part in it. “Everything depends on how real the amendments to the state budget are, and to what extent our demands for social support of the population, social benefits, and assistance for the agro-industrial sector are taken into account. If all this is included, we might consider the possibility of supporting this kind of budget.”
The members of the “neutral” Lytvyn bloc say that the convening of an extraordinary session of the Verkhovna Rada is unlikely. Faction member Oleh Zarubinsky declared that, according to the regulations, the Verkhovna Rada “should not work in a plenary regime until September.”
“I think that the coalition will get enough votes to hold an extraordinary session, but I doubt that it will adopt anything. If they cannot cope with two budgets in ‘peacetime,’ when parliament is in session, they won’t be in a hurry to vote now, because most of the amendments proposed both by the president and the prime minister are of a conflictual nature,” said Viktor Nebozhenko, the head of the sociological service Ukrainian Barometer.
Oleksii Haran, the scholarly director of the NAUKMA Political Analysis School, also doubts that an extraordinary session will be convened. “As recent voting has proved, neither the coalition nor the opposition will gain a majority. They lack the votes of the United Center for a majority. So there is no problem with convening a session; there is a problem with reaching a compromise on the budget and conducting efficient voting.”
The productivity, efficiency, and success of the work of the current parliamentary convocation are a separate topic. Here are the statistics on parliament’s work thus far: during the first and second sessions the Verkhovna Rada discussed 209 draft laws (the fifth convocation: 1,039); 179 draft laws have not been discussed (the previous Rada sent 149 draft laws to “the basket”). The currect parliament held 55 plenary sessions during the first and second sessions, whereas the Verkhovna Rada of the fifth convocation (three-four sessions) gathered 105 times. The average duration of MPs’ plenary days during the previous convocation was four + hours, but MPs in this convocation attend sessions for an average of 45 minutes.
So, with this kind of “efficiency” it would not be a bad thing to interrupt parliament’s summer vacation. The new Rada system, which identifies every single parliamentarian, is still not in operation. So even those parliamentarians who are vacationing in Sardinia can hands their cards over to the parliamentary “pianists,” who will pass along the rows and push the buttons labeled “for,” and that’s how the national budget will get its “second wind.”
