Political players agree main law needs to be changed, but everyone is offering their own set of changes.
If there is any consensus in Ukraine’s political chaos today, it’s this: The constitution is broken and needs to be fixed. The guiding document’s unclear division of powers is creating inherent rivalries between the president and the prime minister, putting Ukraine on the path to one political dead end after another.
“It’s unclear who is on top, the president or the prime minister,” said Ihor Zhdanov, director of Open Politics think tank. “This provokes conflicts.”
Ukraine’s first constitution was approved in 1996 – five years after Kyiv became independent upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the source of conflict-ridden politics plaguing Ukraine’s policymaking can be traced to the height of the 2004 Orange Revolution. It was then that presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko accepted a compromise which opened the door for him to the presidency. His decision may have avoided violent clashes during massive protests against the rigged presidential election, but it also set the stage for political paralysis during his presidency.
The amendments curbed presidential powers significantly, taking away the officeholder’s ability to dismiss the prime minister appointed by parliamentary majority. It also stripped the president’s ability to appoint most ministers. Most ministerial candidates are nominated by the prime minister and approved by parliament. The exceptions are foreign and interior ministers, who are nominated by the president, subject to ratification by the Verkhovna Rada.
A lot of government functions are also duplicated between president and prime minister. “We ended up with two governments: The official one and the Security and Defense Council [subordinate to the president] that also takes [Cabinet] decisions,” said Serhiy Taran, a political analyst.
Unelected oblast governors are appointed by the president, but are not clearly required to answer to government, which executes domestic affairs. Both officeholders have roles in foreign policy.
The power-sharing arrangement might be difficult and provoke conflicts, even if the two occupants got along. But President Victor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko dislike each other immensely, exacerbating their constitutional power splits.
If everyone agrees on the need for change, no one agrees on what the changes should be.
Outsiders with a Western European background favor a stronger parliamentary system for Ukraine. That’s the opinion, at least, of Hanna Severinsen, former co-reporter of the monitoring committee on the adherence of Ukraine to the requirements of Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe (PACE).
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s bloc, the second largest in parliament, wants the executive branch to be appointed by parliamentary majority. BYuT deputies would reserve only foreign policy and interior ministry supervision to the popularly elected president. The Regions Party, with the biggest faction in parliament and backed by some of the country’s wealthiest businessmen, wants the president elected by lawmakers. That would put more power in the hands of oligarchs that already hold strong control in parliament.
Kost Bondarenko, director of Kyiv Gorshenin Institute of Management, believes a strong parliamentary system “leads to total irresponsibility.” Bondarenko thinks that “Ukraine should choose a system that has formed historically: The presidential one.”
On April 1, the president became the latest to submit his vision for the constitution, fueling renewed debate over the issue.
According to Yushchenko’s first draft, Ukraine should have a stronger president and a two-chamber parliament with fewer than 400 deputies, down from the current 450. The upper chamber, the Senate, should consist of representatives of geographical regions, as well as ex-presidents who get a seat for life.
According to the president’s cover letter, this form of government will “provide effective state power based on division of its functions, improve checks and balances and remove dualism of power within the executive branch.”
But many experts said a two-chamber parliament is odd for Ukraine. “It will complicate the decision-making process,” Severinsen said. Taras Berezovets, Polittech political consulting company director, said that such a parliament might contribute to “clashes between the Russian-oriented south and east and the Ukrainian-oriented west, and cause separatism in the country.”
Presidential candidate and parliamentarian Anatoliy Hrytsenko is promoting a strong presidential “constitution of order,” in which the president would exclusively form and head the executive branch. To counter-balance the power, a simpler impeachment procedure would be introduced.
After the authoritarian rule of ex-President Leonid Kuchma, which lasted from 1994 to 2005, some experts warn against a presidential model. “One person makes mistakes more often than parliament, which works out consensus decisions,” Berezovets said.
Like the president, Hrytsenko said the main law should be amended as soon as possible, before the next presidential election currently scheduled for Oct. 25. “Even now we can predict that if this election passes and the constitution is not changed, the next presidential election can be expected in a year, or a year-and-a-half, not five,” Hrytsenko said on April 14. “There will be no peace either at the level of personal relations, nor state governance.”
More agreement can be found on making smaller, but important, legal changes, such as allowing voters to pick individual candidates from party lists, rather than forcing them to vote for the whole party list designed by its leaders.
But the rest is still up for debate.
Vitaliy Kulyk, director of the Center for Studies of Civil Society Problems, said deputy factions “do not trust each other.” Therefore, mustering 300 votes required to amend the constitution is out of question – even if they everyone miraculously agreed what the actual changes should be.
