While President Viktor Yushchenko was resting in the Crimea, First Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov remained active. Recently he presided over a joint meeting of three of the cabinet’s five committees. Although the whole affair lasted less than half an hour, a number of important decisions were made.
The issue of Odesa’s Institute of Land Troops was expected as a major point on the agenda, considering its scheduled transfer to Lviv. In fact, President Yushchenko dwelt on the matter at the village of Nahuyevychy, saying: “As Commander in Chief, I have accepted the Defense Ministry’s proposal concerning the setting up of this institute; this institute will be founded.” During the cabinet meeting, Communist Heorhy Kriuchkov, chairman of the VR national security and defense committee, MP of parliament’s fourth convocation, stated that “The decision on the formation of a military institute based on Odesa’s Land Troops Institute and within the framework of Odesa’s National Technical University has been made; most importantly, we have managed to preserve the personnel and the basis.” Meanwhile, Odesa’s higher educational establishment will retain its VIP status despite the establishment of the institute in Lviv. Mr. Kriuchkov declared that the one in Odesa will have a student military training faculty using a reservist officers’ training program, also a faculty of post-diploma training for “military specialists”, including foreign language study courses, a retired servicemen and family adoption center, Ukrainian general staff training courses, land troops combat use research center, and Odesa’s lyceum focused on students’ military training.
However, the main issue of the cabinet meeting was curtailing President Yushchenko’s powers. “We are deleting the clause about the right of the President to issue instructions to be followed by the government, although we reserve his right to suspend cabinet decisions while forwarding such motion to a court of law,” summed up Deputy Cabinet Minister Oleksandr Lavrynovych. No response from President Yushchenko to this cabinet resolution to date.
Also, the Ukrainian cabinet meeting under Mykola Azarov’s chairmanship suspended one of ex-Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov’s directive aimed at providing the regions with extra central budget subsidies to the tune of 1.5 billion hryvnias.
That same day the Ukrainian cabinet resolved to dismiss Naftohaz Ukrainy’s first deputy CEOs Ihor Vasuniuk, Volodymyr Lytvyn, and Vsevolod Shperun. Vasuniuk had held the post since May 11, 2006. Lytvyn had had it since Dec. 30 2005, and Shperun since July 27, 2005. All of them had received their posts on the initiative of MP Oleksiy Ivchenko, currently at the head of the company’s supervisory board (he was the company’s CEO since last April till May 2006). Previously the Ukrainian governement said that nine out of eleven Naftohaz Ukrainy deputy CEOs would be fired.
* * *
The Ukrainian President’s representative at the Verkhovna Rada, Yuriy Kliuchkovsky, believes that the cabinet cannot deny the President his right to issue directives to be complied with by government. “The Cabinet of Ministers is not in a position to determine how the President should act. The Cabinet remains under the President’s control, as follows from the text of the Constitution,” stressed Kliuchkovsky.
He added that “Ukraine has not become a parliamentary republic after the constitutional reform; it remains a parliamentary-presidential republic, which means that the President has his influence on bodies of authority, primarily in the executive sphere. Therefore, acting in this capacity, he must have a right to issue instructions that must be complied with by the ministers. He has this right and the Cabinet cannot deny him this right,” stressed Kliuchkovsky.
At the same time, Presidential Advisor Mykola Poludionny said they would have to see to the cabinet resolution at first: “It depends on whether it has to do with the President’s edicts and directives. If so, this resolution contradicts the law. Yet if it concerns resolutions and so-called instructions, this is rather an old format that existed under the old Constitution, Considering that the Constitution was changed on January 1, this tradition may be discarded.”
Poludionny also declared that the head of state has been provided with relevant analytic reports and that Viktor Yushchenko has forwarded pertinent letters to the cabinet since the start of 2006. He went on to say that the president has a right to receive cabinet reports concerning important issues such as national security and human rights. “If the Cabinet disagrees with any of the President’s decisions, it can appeal it to the Constitutional Court,” he said.
