Thursday, November 15, 2007

System of political unaccountability

An article on the current political situation in Ukraine in latest 'Kyiv Post' includes this:

"In the long term, it’s the Ukrainian nation and its people that suffer from the current political deadlock, lack of unaccountability and disrespect for the rule of law...Politicians created a system in which a small circle of politicians divide power among each other and a system of political unaccountability thrives.."

Co-incidentally, an illustration of this system is provided in a piece in today's 'Ukrainska Pravda' entitled: "From the life of the nomenklatura elites: the property of Ivan Plyushch", which describes how Plyushch - a former VR speaker, and currently National Security and Defence Council secretary close to the president and his secretariat, just two days before the 30th September VR elections, asked the president to help him obtain permission from the Cabinet of Ministers to transfer ownership and build a house on a plot of land owned by the Ukrainian state.

The dacha in which Plyushch resides right now, in what the British call 'grace-and-favour' accommodation, is located on this plot in the elite Pushcha Vodytsya suburb of Kyiv.

On 1st October president Yushchenko writes to PM Yanukovych to sort the matter out, and Yanuk promptly does this, even though, strictly speaking, the president no longer has the authority to forward such directives to the KabMin. By October 3rd Yanuk instructs minister Azarov to grant approval, and by the 5th, the ministry of Justice has also rubber-stamped a positive decision. The speed with which everything was resolved, by Ukrainian standards was truly miraculous.

Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that Plyushch is one of the main proponents in the NUNS camp of a wide VR coalition with PoR, in which he would be one of the favourites for the VR speaker's chair..

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