In his report on the government's progress in the last year, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Dec. 11 reported that financial stability had been achieved – the nation has more than Hr 100 billion in state coffers, inflation is under control and the currency has stabilized.
Yatsenyuk’s address to parliament came as his
government is increasingly under pressure for the poor economy and slow
progress on the reform and anti-corruption front.
Yatsenyuk admitted that inflation had eroded
public sector salaries and pensions, but he saw hope of a turnaround for the
war-torn economy with 0.7 percent growth expected in 2016.
He said the legislature had to share blame for
problems in society, since the parliament passed laws that governed the
activities of government bodies.
Since the 2016 state budget and tax code, seen
as a precondition to restart the economy are not adopted, the report lacked
essential details, even though his presentation was interrupted when Bloc of
President Petro Poroshenko lawmaker Oleg Barna attacked him.
A reform-oriented Petro Poroshenko Bloc lawmaker
Mustafa Nayyem picked up on the widespread disappointment when he urged
Yatsenyuk to “put his personal ambitions aside” and “resign voluntarily.”
Yatsenyuk responded by challenging the
parliament to face his cabinet with a vote of no-confidence, well aware that
such a motion was unlikely to pass since his own faction, the People’s Front
controlling 81 lawmakers in the 422 strong legislature wasn’t prepared to
sacrifice its leader.
“I am not holding on to this chair,” he said
with confident voice. Voted in on Dec. 2, 2014, Yatsenyuk said he headed a “kamikaze” government doomed to be unpopular, due to unaviodable austerity measures. The ratings of People’s Front had plummeted.
Rules allowed for parliament to oust Yatsenyuk
since a one-year grace period during which the legislature couldn’t fire the
government had passed.
When Yatsenyuk in parliament proceeded to blame the Poroshenko camp Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn, the political deadlock erupted
into a physical conflict after Barna attempted to remove Yatsenyuk from the
rostrom.
In revenge, Barna was violently attacked and beaten by People’s Front lawmakers.
The unapologetic Barna justified his use of
force by saying he was fed up with the “cynicism” on the part of a government
conducting “no reforms” and failing to “protect the people” while
well-connected lawmakers “generated billions” in backroom deals and refused to
sign up for the cabinet’s resignation.
“Time is up, people demand
change,” he told the 112 Ukraina TV
channel. “We should have done something like this much earlier.”
Barna was kicked out of the president’s faction
over his use of force. Backing the decision, Poroshenko said he “highly respected” Barna “who had been at the front and was wounded,” but the unity of the coalition had to be preserved, he said as he aimed to avoid a spat between his and Yatsenyuk’s factions.
Backing Barna, Batkivshchyna Party junior
government coalition party lawmaker Sergiy Vlasenko agreed that the government
had failed to cooperate with the parliament throughout the past year, often handing down draft laws with questionable measures as “no discussion, must pass.”
“But the government wasn’t criticized for acting
in any uncivilized or undemocratic manner,” he complained to the Kyiv
Post, challenging outrage over Barna’s use of force demnounced as “un-European” by some.
Speaking about the government’s achievements,
Yatsenyuk listed a decrease in the foreign debt from $73 billion to $66
billion, elimination of the national oil- and gas company’s $10 billion
deficit, five million households provided with utility subsidizes and
“unprecedented” security and defense spending at 5 percent of the gross
national product.
He thanked the parliament for passing a number of mostly anti-graft laws required by the European Union for Ukrainians to be
granted visa free travel to the bloc. “We deserve that EU opens its doors.”
He admitted that more had to be done in the
field of deregulation, and said that implementation of a key law on the public
administration aimed at turning into a service organization was crucial.
The head of government also urged the lawmakers
to pass a long overdue law on privatization to ensure that major industrial
enterprises “wouldn’t operate to benefit the interest of politicians.”
Earlier individual cabinet ministers on Dec. 9
had given their account of the achievements throughout the year. The Minister
of Justice Pavlo Petrenko said that the ministry had saved considerable
funds by eliminating overpriced public procurements for its needs.
Online government measures had furthermore
simplified procedures for opening a business and registering a marriage,
bypassing bribe extorting officials. The ministry had also cut illicit payments to outsiders for items like the use of paper forms.
Barna dismissed the listed achievements as
“limited” and “populist” since they didn’t touch the grand corruption, U.S.
Vice President Joseph Biden had referred to as a cancer in a Dec. 8 address to
parliament.
A public finances policy expert Pavlo Kukhta
with the civic Reanimation Package of Reform initiative didn’t agree fully. He
told the Kyiv Post that the expected decrease in the public sector’s share of
the economy was being achieved by increasing efficiency and cracking down of
corruption and misuse of funds, not by austerity.
The proposed state budget aimed at lowering the
tax burden on the economy from 46 percent to 41 percent.
Staff writer Johannes Wamberg
Andersen can be reached at [email protected]
