The sweet smell of reform would appear to be in the air once again in Kyiv. A new government led by the crusading Yulia Tymoshenko has begun the new year with a series of bold appointments and initiatives that suggest we could be about to witness the biggest changes in the country since 1991.
Nor are the ambitions of the government limited to personnel changes. Prior to the formation of the renewed Orange coalition government at the end of 2007, high-ranking insiders within the Tymoshenko camp often spoke about their plans to introduce institutional reforms that will create the basis for a strong state for years to come. However, while such sentiments are certainly admirable, it would seem rather obvious that Ukraine’s parliament, which is by definition the central institution in any functioning democracy, remains very much out of the reformist loop.
A national embarrassment
Fights and mass blockades of the podium are such everyday features of Ukrainian parliamentary life that few viewers pay attention any longer to the regular scenes of scuffling and shoving in the nation’s legislature which appear so often on the evening news. After years of this prepubescent misbehaviour, it is actually hard to imagine what rowdy deputies would need to do in order to recapture the public’s attention.
The on-going debacle of Ukraine’s parliament is not only a source of national shame, but also a black mark against the country in the eyes of watching EU observers, reflecting as it does a worrying level of political immaturity that makes a mockery of Kyiv’s claims to a decisive democratic breakthrough.
Democratic traditions reloaded
The first major success of the new government, which saw Tymoshenko elected as Prime Minister in mid December via a show of hands, was itself an example of democracy broken down into its most basic component parts. The spectacle made for great theatre and also suggested that the new government would be attempting to rebuild parliament’s democratic credentials from the very foundations. This is something that Tymoshenko’s administration can now focus on.
One obvious target would be the still rampant practice of absentee voting, which sees deputies in the session hall routinely using their absent colleagues’ electronic cards to register votes on their behalf. In a country which has fought so long and hard against the practice of electoral fraud this would seem to be particularly inappropriate behaviour, and yet it remains standard practice in parliament, with members across the political divide guilty of indulging each other.
Until some sort of decorum is established in the work of the Ukrainian parliament, all the democratic gains made elsewhere in society will be effectively undermined. As the Tymoshenko government refines its reform programme, they would do well to bear this in mind. No doubt opponents would label any attack on deputy freedoms as yet another populist move, but getting Ukraine’s MPs to behave would represent a historic and much-needed breakthrough for the country.
