The fears of Ukrainian nationalists that constitutional amendments on the decentralization of power in Ukraine will undermine the country’s sovereignty are groundless, experts say.
After parliament passed the bill of amendments in the first
reading on Aug. 31, protesters at a nationalist rally outside the Rada turned
violent, and three national guardsmen died when one protester threw a grenade
into riot police ranks.
Although the bill now awaits a second vote requiring
at least 300 votes to pass, a separate law needs to be passed that will
regulate the “special status” foreseen in the constitutional changes for
easternmost Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.
As well as deadly violence, the fallout from the
passage of the bill included the partial collapse of the governing coalition in
parliament. Junior partner coalition member Radical Party, which opposed the
passage of the bill, left the five-party grouping.
His party’s departure means that the coalition lacks
the necessary constitutional majority to pass the bill without outside votes.
But Mychailo Wynnyckyj, a professor at the Kyiv-Mohyla
Academy, said the violence and political turmoil were in vain since the
proposed changes simply would not have had the effect that the nationalists feared.
Wynnyckyj, a Canadian-born Cambridge economic
sociologist and constitutional expert, said that Moscow has been aiming to turn
Ukraine into a confederation. Under this governing structure, Luhansk and
Donetsk oblasts, under the Kremlin’s influence, would be able to conduct their own
foreign policy and ultimately block rapprochement with the West for the entire
country.
However, he told
the Kyiv Post that that even though the constitutional amendments were clearly
being dictated to Ukraine by external powers, they didn’t really pose a threat
to the territorial integrity of the country. On the contrary – the changes
could be useful in a variety of ways in a post-occupational situation, if peace
is actually ever achieved.
The constitutional changes open the way for a special
regime in the occupied areas to be regulated by a separate law. This law was actually
adopted in September 2014 by the previous parliamentary group that was elected
during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych. The law is controversial because it
grants the occupied areas the right to extended autonomy if they again fall
under government control. They are even allowed to have a separate court system
and their own police force. This essentially legitimizes or legalizes the Kremlin-backed
separatist militias, critics say.
According to the Minsk II peace agreements, the rights
on autonomy will only come into force after Russian troops are withdrawn, and
Kyiv regains control over its eastern border with Russia, and after free and fair
multi-party elections are conducted in the separatist areas in accordance with Ukrainian
legislation.
“Is that even remotely likely to happen in the course
of the next two years?” Wynnyckyj said. He offered an immediate answer: “I
don’t think so. So it’s all very theoretical, the law is moot.”
Labeled transitional provisions, the disputed measures
passed in September 2014 of the law are valid only until 2017.
Political analyst Vitaly Bala who is the director of
the Situations Modeling Agency, said that a withdrawal of Russian troops from Donbas was unlikely. The reason being,
Russian President Vladimir Putin could only survive by whipping up patriotic
hysteria and fueling hatred for a boogeyman external enemy.
But should the Russian army withdraw from Donbas, the Kremlin
could retain influence over territories in the east if authorities hostile to
Kyiv get elected, critics fear.
Even under such a scenario, however, the area’s autonomy
would have no bearing on the country’s foreign policy, Wynnyckyj said. Furthermore,
the law on special rule could be amended by a simple majority in parliament to
let a centrally appointed military-civil administration play a role in the east.
Here the law on a special regime is crucial – without it there would be very thin
legal grounds for the use of the military in what would be considered a
peaceful postwar setting, although with strong tension amid a separatist
presence.
The sense of betrayal felt by some over the issue of
decentralization might also have been fueled by the distance between the rulers
and the ruled in Ukraine. Even presidential camp lawmaker Viktor Chumak,
speaking on Ukrainian television channel 112 Ukraina, said that society has so
little confidence in the political leadership that many believe that the
underlying purpose of the legislative changes was to allow Poroshenko to completely
sell out to Putin.
Wynnyckyj instead sees opportunities for the nation to
strengthen under the new law. “We might have to conduct de-separatization,
almost as post-war Germany underwent de-Nazification,” Wynnyckyj said, adding
that “Poroshenko is perfectly aware of this.”
The trained sociologist did however criticize the
president for completely failing to communicate the logic of the amendments to
the general public and to lawmakers, which he said contributed to the political
tensions.
Wynnyckyj said that Poroshenko had pushed for the
amendments, a part of the Minsk II peace deal, because of the need to preserve
an anti-Putin coalition in the West and keep the sanctions against Russia in
place. Shortly after the vote, on Sept. 2, the United States imposed additional
sanctions on Russia while the European Union decided to prolong theirs.
And by opening up the
prospect of at least limited autonomy in the occupied areas, while at the same
time ensuring that the provisions can only be realized if Kyiv’s control is
re-established there, Poroshenko has outsmarted Putin, Russian analyst Andrey
Piontkovsky said in an article in the Ukrainian newspaper Fakty on Sept. 4.
The West reacted to
the passing of the decentralization bill by saying “fine, Ukraine has fulfilled
the Minsk agreements. Let’s now call on Russia to fulfill its promises,” he
wrote. “This is a diplomatic struggle, which Kyiv is conducting in a
sophisticated and successful way.”
Another controversial part of the amendments is the role of the
presidentially-appointed prefects who will be stationed in each oblast and
ensure that local governments don’t overstep their authority.
Under the changes, locally elected councils will yield executive power in
lieu of presidentially-appointed oblast and district administration heads.
The role of the newly introduced oblast prefects is unclear,
however. Critics fear they would give the president the ability to exert undue
influence on local governments.
Wynnyckyj said, “the prefects will have much less
power than the current governors.”
The only real power the prefects will have is to call early
local elections. “It’s a step towards changing the overly-centralized public
administration,” Wynnyckyj said. “And actually, local governments since
December have controlled 40 percent of all tax revenues.”
The political analyst Bala however predicted that the constitutional
amendments wouldn’t get the 300 votes needed to pass. One of the remaining
junior partners in the coalition, Samopomich, even says that the process should
be started again from scratch.
One Samopomich lawmaker, Viktoria
Voytsytska, said there shouldn’t even be any attempt to change the
constitution, as the document itself, in Article 157, stipulates that it cannot
be amended during wartime.
Kyiv Post staff writer Johannes Wamberg
Andersen can be reached at [email protected]
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov
contributed to this report.
