Will Referendum Solve the Main Problem?
The referendum has been proclaimed, yet there are no critical consideration of the issues placed on its agenda. Television feeds us speculative propaganda, referring to the “voice of the people,” a voice that, back in the 1930’s, demanded that members of the (imaginary) Trotsky-Bukharin “terrorist” organization be “shot like rabid dogs, in the 1950s condemned Pasternak without reading any of his works, in 1968s supported aggression against Czechoslovakia, and the list could be extended.
Nothing has changed. We still see the man in the street playing the humiliating role of a political guillotine. There is always a talkative coal miner wearing his helmet and supporting the regime’s correct course or the little old lady bent under the weight of years cursing lawmakers and certainly praising the referendum.
One could a priori agree with the President’s reasoning; indeed, we must overcome “many years of confrontation among various political forces” and even welcome his determination to untie his hands with the aid of a referendum to solve all those “pressing issues.” Yet there are factors giving rise to certain doubts.
A referendum being held on the initiative of the “masses” is for the gullible. In reality, the whole thing is engineered by the regional bureaucracy, all those that stuffed their pockets using privatization and now want to reaffirm their economic authority via political institutions. They are no longer content with the Constitution. Verkhovna Rada as an institution of representative power dating from the epoch of romantic democracy is threadbare; they need the Upper House to legalize the illicit redistribution of what used to be known as the “property of the whole people,” making the process irreversible. Precisely this interest is behind the formulation of the fifth questions to be answered by the referendum, concerning the bicameral Parliament where “one of the houses would represent the interests of the regions of Ukraine...”
Are the people more concerned about curtailing the legislators’ immunity than about bread and utility prices? Why subject the issue to referendum? Parliamentary immunity — and that of the President — as a legal norm is at variance with Article 24 of the Constitution and could be invalidated by the Constitutional Court. This article reads that there can be no privileges or limitations on the grounds of race, color, political, religious, and other persuasions, sex, ethnic and social origin, property status, place of residence, language or other indicators. Without doubt, indicators imply one’s official status or office. In other words, the Constitution simply bans all privileges and exemptions. The President’s jet liner, civil servant’s pension, free public transport for invalids, “free passage” at all levels of government control — all these preferential rights for those more equal than others contradict the Constitution and can be challenged in court. Of course, to do so would be contrary to tradition. Considering the referendum’s importance, one of the questions could be an amendment to Article 24, namely “All privileges and exemptions shall be granted only on the strength of law.”
When asked whether I agree that 300 lawmakers is better than 450, I am tempted to say yes, but then I pause and ask myself why 300, why not 200? Also suppose we make Verkhovna Rada membership dependent on the size of the population. Incidentally, in the English-speaking world, particularly in the United States, the number of Congressmen in the Lower House varies depending on the latest census — for example, 435 representatives for 256 million citizens. If we adopt this principle in Ukraine we would have some 100 People’s Deputies in Verkhovna Rada.
About the Constitution being adopted by referendum. Although the idea appeals to my ochlocratic instinct, I would rather do without it. For some reason I am instantly reminded of the recent elections with their highwayman PR techniques making the Ukrainian man in the street as vulnerable as an American Indian to firewater.
It is clearly apparent that the important problem of improving political vehicles is being supplanted by a hasty spur-of-the-moment cleanup of the political stables. The passions surrounding the referendum make no historical sense; it is just another bureaucratic plot with the stronger subjugating the weaker, the rich the poor, the majority the minority.
It is not the Left that are an obstacle in Ukraine’s development; rather, it is a situation in which wealth is a function of power and not those who actually work. This is the number one problem and the proposed referendum will never solve it, more likely to the contrary.
