State Property Fund Gets New Head

Last Thursday, Verkhovna Rada finally confirmed Oleksandr Bondar as Chairman of the State Property Fund. As we know, the Left had long projected its attitude toward privatization on the Fund’s designated Head.

The voting was 230 for and 112 against confirmation. This indicates that this time the Left and Right were in agreement. According to Viktor Suslov, some agreements were made earlier: some factions were assured that certain objects they needed would be privatized on conditions they needed. Incidentally, the openly opposition Hromada Party also voted for confirmation.

The Left, having voted for the President’s nominee, managed to put on a good show. Mr. Bondar assured them that he takes a dim view of certificate privatization and personally dealt only with small scale privatization. He also added that would cooperate closely with the Parliament.

The President won formally. However, as Serhiy Teriokhin thinks, should Bondar have been rejected the executive power would have been able to conduct privatization for the next 60 days without any control because an acting head need not report to the Parliament. According to Ivan Chyzh, a special concern of the Left is the issue of Ukrtelekom privatization.