Editor’s Note: Ukraine will celebrate Constitution Day tomorrow, marking the day the Verkhovna Rada adopted Ukraine’s post-Independence Constitution: June 28, 1996. This piece from our archives, published on June 27, 2015, breaks down the debate and compromises that went into the document.
What follows is a summary of how the nation’s fundamental law was passed and a few interesting facts about the document as told to the Kyiv Post by Kyiv-Mohyla Academy professor Mychailo Wynnyckyj. In 1999, he wrote his master’s thesis at Cambridge University analyzing how the nation’s Constitution was adopted 19 years ago.
On June 28, 1996, Ukraine became the last of the 15 former Soviet republics to adopt a Constitution.
Starting in the afternoon of June 27, 1996, and ending at 9:20 a.m. the next day, Parliament held a marathon plenary session amid prolonged haggling over the state language and national symbols, as well as the status of Crimea, among principal reasons. According to Wynnyckyj, there was friction across the political aisle and between the legislative and executive branches of government.
On the right there was Soviet political dissident Viacheslav Chornovil and his Narodna Rada Party versus the Communist Party led by Donetsk-native Petro Symonenko. Chornovil and other nationalist elements in Parliament were unequivocal for having Ukrainian be the only official state language and for the trident, or tryzub, as the nation’s coat of arms. They also were pushing for the national anthem that Ukraine has today.
The Ukrainian trident, officially the nation’s official small coat of arms, was part of a set of comprises between right- and left-wing parties in Parliament for passing is first post-independence Constitution on June 28, 1996. To this day, Ukraine has not adopted a grand coat of arms.
Meanwhile, socialist Oleksandr Moroz, then parliamentary speaker, was constantly facing off with then-President Leonid Kuchma for power – Ukraine wasn’t a presidential republic yet. The president’s version of the Constitution “effectively tipped the balance of power between the branches of government in favor of the presidency,” Wynnyckyj wrote in his dissertation.
After five days of debate in the legislature, three key issues remained unresolved. Right-wing lawmakers had left the plenary session because they could not find agreement “on issues of language, state symbols, and on a constitutional guarantee of the right to private property,” according to Wynnyckyj.
So Kuchma took the initiative and issued a decree authorizing a referendum for his version of the Constitution. He went on television on June 27, 1996 to address the nation and inform it of his decision.
His version envisioned a bicameral Parliament with the lower house “based on the current 450…deputies, and a Senate composed of three deputies from each of Ukraine’s 25 oblasts, plus three from the city of Kyiv and two from Sevastopol (in Crimea). Furthermore, a significant number of executive and judicial branch appointments were relegated to the sole competence of the presidency,” according to the professor’s dissertation.
“Moroz panicked, he thought the referendum vote would be fixed, so he decided to pass a Constitution in Parliament that is not heavily presidential as Kuchma’s proposal,” Wynnyckyj told the Kyiv Post by phone. “They (lawmakers) knew if they didn’t pass the Constitution, they would be powerless. It was like holding a gun to their heads.”
So the squabbling began, ultimately ending in comprises between the right- and left-wing parties.
In exchange for making Ukrainian the only official state language, Crimea was given full autonomy, including its own Constitution, Parliament, and own ministry of education and culture, for example.
Each constitutional article required a constitutional majority of 300 votes or more out of 450.
Another compromise was to make the trident the state’s small coat of arms. Lawmakers agreed that the grand coat of arms would be decided in a separate vote which to this day has never happened.
Parliament adopted the music to the current national anthem – titled “Shche ne vmerla Ukraina” (Ukraine has not yet perished) – composed by Mykhailo Verbytsky in 1863, not the lyrics.
The lyrics,written by Pavlo Chubynsky in 1862, wouldn’t be officially adopted until March 6, 2003.
A copy of the Ukrainian Constitution passed in 1996.
On prosecutorial immunity
Lawmakers also got blanket immunity from prosecution on June 28 while adopting each constitutional article separately. Previously, only limited immunity – from libel and criminal responsibility for their votes – was included.
The way that blanket immunity was done, however, is suspect – it happened during a birthday celebration in Parliament for a lawmaker: Narodna Rada deputy Viktor Musiyaka, a co-author of the Constitution.
Although he wasn’t a member of the constitutional parliamentary committee, he was considered “a super constitutional expert,” and had written many of the document’s amendments, Wynnytskyj said.
When the clock struck midnight on June 28 his colleagues started uncorking four champagne bottles they brought in for his birthday. At this time they were voting for Article 80 on immunity, but “it was supposed give them immunity from libel suits for anything that was said in Parliament and they couldn’t be criminally held responsible for their voting,” said the professor.
Seizing the opportunity, Moroz and his allies decided to pass blanket immunity. The process was “done outside protocol, not enough copies of the article were printed for everybody, and those that were supposed to protect this from happening – Narodna Rada Party – were celebrating Musiayaka’s birthday,” Wynnyckyj said.
The following was added to the article: “National Deputies of Ukraine shall not be held criminally liable, detained or arrested without the consent of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.”
By 9 a.m. Kuchma entered the parliamentary chamber. At 9:20 a.m. the Constitution was passed in its entirety, formally in the third reading, according to the professor’s dissertation. It was approved by 315 registered lawmakers, opposed by 36 with12 abstentions and 30 not registering votes.
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
