Saturday, February 25, 2006

Discredited Verkhovna Rada

On Friday a proposal by BYuT in the VR to strip criminal immunity from Ukrainian city hall council deputies failed to gain enough support and garner sufficient votes for further progress be made in this matter.

Former secretary of the of National Security and Defence Council, Petro Poroshenko highlighted the scale of the problem claiming, that because of current decrees, prosecutors are unable to bring to court 780 criminal cases involving such deputies.

BYuT complain their proposal in the VR was torpedoed by the combined efforts of NSNU, PR, and Communist deputies, and called their actions irresponsible. "Liquidation of automatic criminal immunity for deputies would have enabled cleaning out of bandits and villains from representative organs."

Immunity was assured for these guys when a memorandum of understanding was signed last fall by Yushchenko and Yanukovych. Revocation of such immunity for VR and City hall council deputies is one of BYuT's conditions for creation of a grand Orange coalition before the March 26th VR elections.

Thoughtful analysis "whether the Verkhovna Rada as an institution can be trusted with - or, more bluntly, is fit - to exercise its new, enhanced role [after the March 26th elections]" is provided in a recently published important article by Markian Bilynskyj, U.S.-Ukraine Foundation's Vice President and Director of Field Operations.

I have blogged previously about the type of individuals who may be elected to the VR in a few weeks time, and of possible instability of any likely coalitions.

"Accumulated arbitrary abuses and a perceived disdain for popular will by the presidency were the proximate causes of the Orange Revolution....Given the powerful dynamics working against the Rada reforming itself it might take a similar - although highly unlikely - popular expression of no-confidence to make the Rada finally take seriously its role as the principal Ukrainian representative and legislative body," concludes Bilynskyj.


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