Last week the Verkhovna Rada slowed down on reforms – expert. INFOGRAPHIC

Last week the Verkhovna Rada slowed down on reforms – expert. INFOGRAPHIC

Last parliamentary week brought outright disappointment regarding the reform capacity/intent of the governing team. Instead of supporting the pace of legislative backing for reforms at the level of Clean Thursday, we got complete simulation of work and, as a result, the postponement of the prosecutor’s office reform on one hand and a very weak start to legislative work on civil service reform on the other.

The Reanimation Package of Reforms traditionally presented the parliament at the start of last week with its proposals for the bills whose advancement would modernize various spheres of the country’s life. A key demand was to launch the prosecutor’s office reform, whose first (organizational) stage was supposed to take place by 25 April 2015. Adoption of this reform in October 2014 was proclaimed by the post-revolutionary authorities as almost the main guarantor of the country’s change. And it’s not surprising, because as a result of the reform we were supposed to get not a Stalinist monster with general oversight, a huge number of prosecutor’s offices and prosecutors across the country, but a European-style service for representing the state’s interests in court. Of course, the system resisted and, as a result of sabotage by Vitaliy Yarema, the reform was not implemented. This led not only to the unfreezing of some assets of representatives of the former regime, but also to the need to revise the reform’s implementation timeline.

Already in early April, experts from the RPR group “Law-Enforcement Reform” together with members of parliament from four majority factions (Olena Sotnyk, Pavlo Kostenko and Yehor Soboliev from Samopomich, Leonid Yemets from the People’s Front, Viktor Chumak from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, Ihor Lutsenko from Fatherland, and non-affiliated Oksana Syroyid) registered bill 2404-1, which clearly regulated what must be done in case the reform’s deadline is postponed: the competitive appointment procedure for heads of specialized prosecutor’s offices, first of all the anti-corruption one, reduction in the number of prosecutors, and other points that would prevent the reform from freezing. But representatives of the prosecutor’s office, with the agreement of the Presidential Administration, decided simply to postpone the reform for three months without a clear task for themselves about what they should accomplish in that time (bill 2665). Other initiatives (2667, 2668) aimed to hollow out the reform altogether, returning the good old GPU to its Stalinist prototypes. Not to mention that the submission of these bills occurred with procedural violations; the relevant committee did not review them (and when it reviewed 2667 and 2668 on Tuesday evening, it recommended rejection), yet they reached the floor and the reform was postponed.

Of course, neither the public nor international partners could view such a step positively. Therefore the authorities decided to sweeten the pill of simulation and accelerated consideration of the legislative support for another important reform — the civil service at the national (2490) and local (2489) levels. Even here they failed to provide adequate support for the start of the reform — on Thursday the bill had to be put up for revote 18 (!) times to reach the minimum 226 votes. Here we must give great thanks to Speaker Volodymyr Groysman, who showed resilience and motivation. The key votes came from unaffiliated Svoboda members led by Yuriy Levchenko, who agreed to vote for the bill on condition it be refined before the second reading with proposals from his party colleagues. Thus, a chance emerged that selection for key positions via an open competition, strengthening the civil service’s independence from party interests, and adequate pay amid a reduction in the number of officials could become reality.

Also this week work began on bill 1861, which aims to regulate transfer pricing, and bill 1882 “On Military Police” was not supported; RPR experts judged it harmful for the Ministry of Internal Affairs reform because it duplicates functions and extends its provisions not only to police officers (as it should), but also to civilians. In contrast, the bill 2335, harmful to the External Independent Evaluation system for university admission, was included on the agenda and has a chance to be considered soon.

Given all of the above, last week was not about legislatively supporting reforms, but rather simulating it. We face a very sharp discussion about the prosecutor’s tasks by mid-July and the reform of law-enforcement bodies. By the way, the Reanimation Package of Reforms plans to hold a public expert discussion of initiatives in this area in 7 May, since such discussions cannot be expected from the authorities. Ahead are debates on laws on the civil service, condominium ownership, openness of extractive industries, and the implementation of European standards in antitrust legislation...

There is a lot of work, and simulation only leads to a lack of results, disappointment in the authorities, and further loss of trust in their representatives. Therefore we strongly recommend the authorities stop simulating and actually engage in implementing the Roadmap of Reforms.

Yaroslav YURCHYSHYN

http://uainfo.org/