After a Kyiv city council session was spoiled by the opposition and aborted on Dec. 24, its secretary Halyna Herega accused them of disrupting payments to municipal public sector workers.
The
opposition, however, denied the accusation and said the city council
has no relation to the management of city affairs and payments of
salaries, which falls under the purview of executive
authorities.
Hereha
opened a brief city council session in the building that houses the Solomyansky district administration instead of its usual location,
the city hall, which has been partially occupied by protesters
since Dec.1.
Protesters currently only occupy the first floor and the grand hall of the
building, the rest of the building is being guarded by
protesters’ own security to prevent vandalism. Despite this, most city officials
have shunned the building for most of the month, says Andriy
Strannikov, a city council deputy for oppositional Ukrainian
Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR) and commandant of city
hall.
The city council session, which lasted 10 minutes and was attended mostly by the
pro-presidential majority deputies, was held behind a locked-up door,
which was forced open by several representatives of the parliamentary
opposition, whose status allows them to freely entry any government
building.
“We
came to the location of the council session to express a protest
because these people no longer have a right to represent Kyivans
and gathered for an illegitimate session,” said Andriy Illyenko, a
Svoboda parliament member who was among the team that broke into the
session.
The
city council’s powers ran out this summer, but a new election was
never scheduled. Moreover, the city has had no elected mayor since July 2012.
To make matters worse, even the president-appointed city
administrator Oleksandr Popov was suspended from office earlier this
month because he is a suspect in a criminal investigation conducted
by the general prosecutor’s office over excessive use of force on
Nov. 30 against peaceful demonstrators.
General
Proesecutor Viktor Pshonka alleges that Popov gave orders to riot
police to attack peaceful demonstrators on Maidan Nezalezhnosti to
clear the area for the mounting of a Christmas Tree. Popov has denied the accusations. In Popov’s stead, the city has been run by Anatoliy
Holubchenko, his deputy.
Holubchenko
told the municipal TV station Kyiv that the city needs no sessions of
the council to pay wages and pensions on Dec. 23. Yet Hereha
insisted at a briefing on Dec. 24 that amendments to the city budget
are required to be able to pay wages for October, November and
December to employees of Kyivpastrans, a municipal transport company,
as well as wages for November and December to all municipal workers.
These amount to hundreds of millions of hryvnias that will remain
unpaid because the failed sessions of the city council, she said.
“I
cannot hold sessions in such conditions and will not do this until
the New Year,” Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted her as saying.
She said strikes by public sector workers are expected.
Yet the opposition claims that the city council only gathered to flex
muscles. “They want to show they still exist, these are the dying
convulsions,” says Illyenko. He said Ukraine’s parliament needs to
seize the initiative and set an election in Kyiv so that the capital
would have legitimate power.
Illenko
says the accusations against the opposition is an attempt to cover
financial mismanagement by the municipal government and blame it on
political opponents.
In
the meantime, the city hall has been run by the protesters, mostly
representatives of Svoboda and UDAR.
Strannikov,
the commandant, says that protesters are managing all of the vital
functions of the building instead of the city authorities, such as
security, rubbish collection and the like, as well as current
repairs.
On
the third floor of the building, where offices of municipal workers
are located and where access is only granted to authorized personnel,
he shows off a new patch of plaster on the wall where a hole once was. Some door handles and name plates are still covered in paint
sprayed when the building was first occupied on Dec. 1.
He
said protesters collected a few hundred hryvnias to fix the plaster
which was caused in the very first hours when protesters took over
the building. There was also a computer stolen at that time, and
other pieces of office equipment. He claims it was later returned to
the city hall.
