President’s intervention in Crimean tempest has led to a temporary calm
Crimean Speaker Leonid Hrach has highly appreciated the results of the extraordinary session of the Crimean Supreme Council which ended February 1 after “hearing” the government’s report (there was in fact no report): he called it a “turning point” in the relations between the legislature and government and “an appeal to the government to come to its senses, i.e., to do business, put an end to what we have had up to now, and obey the law.” He said, “The parliamentary crisis is over, ushering in a period of political responsibility.” However, this seems to be a clear exaggeration of what really happened.
Let us look at the session through the eyes of an ordinary voter: what did the Crimea gain from the two additional days of its lawmakers wrangling in the session room?
Even if we admit that the session took place at all, we will have to discard any existing doubts about the legitimacy of the session and disregard the fact that the 52 votes needed to open the session appeared on the electronic display board only when People’s Deputies of Ukraine Anatoly Franchuk and Anatoly Dronbotov, who had previously headed the Crimean government, came into the room. In other periods of the session, the number of deputies in the hall was far short of 50, although the display board sometimes beamed 63 votes. We must also close our eyes to the fact that the still-unregistered Center group (no one knows how many Deputies it includes) was called a faction and worked on a par with the other factions. Of course, the Crimean government was to make a report, which could have been a useful parliamentary item if it had been organized normally and without agitation, but the circumstances already outlined turned it into a farce which failed to stop the previous face-off.
The session was perhaps of “great importance” only in one aspect: it showed to what extent the Parliament and government of the Crimea have deep differences and different approaches to assessments. It showed that these contradictions in fact lie not so much in the personal attitudes of Messrs. Hrach and Kunitsyn as in the different philosophies and methods of work of several groups of lawmakers. And Mr. Hrach, no matter how displeased he may feel, is the leader of only one of them, the Communist faction, and it is far from a majority. And had it not been for the President’s intervention, when he said he opposed Mr. Kunitsyn’s resignation and spoke to both Mr. Hrach and Mr. Kunitsyn on the eve of the session, appealing to them to make peace, the conflict could have assumed a most horrific shape.
Given the floor, Mr. Kunitsyn said he had received the documents of the extraordinary session as late as Friday (moreover, the draft resolution already included the verdict: recognize the work of the government as unsatisfactory and bring it down), so the government, also a collegial body, failed to debate on and approve the report and, hence, did not instruct anybody to read it. He asked a two-day postponement of the session so that the government could duly prepare the report. But the Deputies began to debate it.
Deputy Anatoly Kotseruba spoke as a supplementary reporter. His additional report consisted exclusively of criticism. Mr. Kunitsyn was blamed for everything: electricity blackouts, gas shortages, nonpayments, absence of reserve fuel, the decline and fall of farming, bread price increases, the fact that only some, but not all, enterprises rode out the crises, and even inflation of the hryvnia. Undoubtedly, the Crimean government does make mistakes and Mr. Kunitsyn is to blame for some things,and session criticism could only have done him good if it had been expressed in carefully-worded and well-thought- out terms and if the government had not been sweepingly blamed not for everything but only for what it really deserved to be. Automobile plant manager Anatoly Lazarev, for example, accused the government head of paying too little attention to his enterprise, although it is common knowledge the car plant is well in view of the authorities and was even visited by this country’s President. The Solon got carried away with drawing parallels and excessively “straightened out” the situation, saying that in his opinion as “there can be no two managers at one plant,” so there should only be one “manager of the Crimea.” Chairman of the parliamentary agricultural commission and former Deputy Premier for agriculture, Fedir Sniehiriov, blamed Mr. Kunitsyn for the collapse of agriculture, although he might have shared responsibility equally with the government. Deputy Oleksandr Pomortsev put the blame on the government for the price of potatoes reaching that of bananas.
Naturally, under such circumstances the deputies did not heed the words of Mr. Kunitsyn himself that an 18.4% growth of industrial output is no deception, that improvement of the tax- and budget-related work and the creation of a 24,000-ton grain reserve, and the establishment of free economic areas and priority-investment regions in the holiday spots and transport are all the result of his government’s work.
Deputy Kotseruba clearly defined what was going on: “I was against the dismissal of the Franchuk government in 1998, and I have no other position,” he told the audience among which was Mr. Franchuk.
However, when it came to the vote, the government was not even close to being brought down. Then came a complete confusion: each draft decision was rejected. The proposal to close the session was voted down, as were the proposals to prolong the session and to take note of the report. Moreover, Deputy Mykola Aheyev warned the chairman that some Deputies vote with several cards, but Mr. Hrach paid no attention, and the figure on the display board turned from 61 to 63 votes. The proposal to withdraw the draft resolution and put it forward again at the next session was also rejected. Mr. Hrach asked in bewilderment after each vote: what next? Again a proposal was put to the vote and rejected.
On Tuesday morning, voting began again with the most radical proposal of Mr. Kotseruba, which polled only 48 votes, while the next compromise proposal to recognize the government performance as unsatisfactory and to hear in March the question of rectifying the found shortcomings got 52 votes on the board, although Deputy Anatoly Burdiuhov made it clear that there were only 45 deputies in the hall. At this point it was decided to adjourn the session.
As a result, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma appears to be a peacemaker, Mr. Hrach the winner, Mr. Kunitsyn the whipping boy, Mr. Franchuk who got redressed for his dismissal two years ago, and the Deputies look like actors, in a tragedy or comedy?
It is quite obvious that the Crimean political conflict has thus not been exhausted or settled: it has only been subdued perhaps until March if the Deputies’ positions do not harden as soon as at the February session, or even until April if the President again asks the conflicting parties in February and March to come to an amicable settlement. However, it also obvious that harmony between the Crimean branches of governance cannot rest on the President’s requests; it needs a more solid foundation. Thus from the viewpoint of the ordinary voter, this kind of parliamentary performance — when the lawmakers cannot decide whether to close or adjourn the session or when the session winds up with the Deputies even arguing whether or not at least one decision has been made — loses any sense at all.
INCIDENTALLY
The Crimean government press service reported that Serhiy Kunitsyn commented on the results of the Crimean Parliament’s extraordinary session, saying, “I cannot agree to this evaluation of the government’s performance, for it was dictated by political expediency rather than objective reasons.”
That the present Council of Ministers team has been the most successful one over the past five years has been demonstrated, its head thinks, by the republic’s indisputable economic achievements. This is its over 18% growth of industrial output, a twofold reduction of pension and public sector pay arrears, almost UAH 1 billion budget revenues over the past twelve months, extended powers of the republic in the economy, the ongoing work to set up priority-development territories and the Crimean Port Free Trade Area, and much else.
The Crimean head of government thinks the parliamentary crisis in the Crimea was not artificial, as now claimed. Otherwise, it would not have lasted so long. It was caused by the parliamentary leadership’s intolerance of different opinions and fundamental differences with the Communist faction over privatization, forms of property ownership, and a number of other issues.
