Our Ukraine attacks political reform

The meeting of Our Ukraine’s council to elect a chairman has been adjourned for two or three weeks. The regional organizations must get a chance to express their opinions about the further destiny of the party and about the people who are to lead it.

“We decided to discuss the issues on the local level. This will take a maximum of three weeks, or even two. However, I personally expect it to happen sooner,” Yevhen Chernovetsky explained to journalists. At the council meeting seven or eight candidates were named. Yurii Yekhanurov, Roman Bezsmertny, and Petro Poroshenko were most frequently mentioned.

It is expected that the candidates will use this time to visit the regions and promote themselves among local members. However, Bezsmertny has already announced his decision not to travel. “He considers this inappropriate, since he is convinced that his presence at such discussions may be taken for some sort of pressure on ordinary party members,” press secretary Tetiana Mokridi quotes him as saying.

It cannot be said, however, that the session was a total write-off. Oleksandr Ropotenko, who is no. 145 on the bloc list, was elected acting chairman of the party’s executive committee. The most important result is the decision to form two separate working groups deep within Our Ukraine, which will ensure legislative support for the elimination of the ill-famed political reform.

The first group is headed by Yurii Kliuchkovsky. His group will draft a proposal on canceling the political reform and submit it to the Constitutional Court. Its members claim that certain constitutional procedures were violated when the political reform was being adopted. The other working group will formulate a draft law on introducing further changes to the constitution. This assignment was given to ex- Minister of Justice Roman Zvarych.

Can the Constitutional Court repeal the political reform? On the one hand, the political reform has already become the body of the Constitution of Ukraine for the last 11 months, and obviously the Constitutional Court cannot abrogate the constitution. On the other, anything can be expected from our Constitutional Court. The previous government used it to solve political problems.

Victor Nebozhenko does not exclude the possibility that this may happen again. “The Constitutional Court is only 20 percent judicial and thus acts within the legal judicial framework, but 80 percent of it is a political battleground where different political forces clash. The Constitutional Court is more of a political structure than a judicial one, but that’s not the fault of the judges, as they are young and inexperienced. Other countries’ Constitutional Courts have certain constitutional traditions connected with political culture, which we, unfortunately, lack,” the political analyst said.

However, the theme of reconsidering the political reform may just be political spin technology, a way to consolidate Our Ukraine and prevent it from splitting - a sort of “external enemy.”

Right now it is difficult to predict how this story will end. In any case, it will probably last for a long time. So, the “coalition soap opera” has now been replaced by the “constitutional” one.