Lawmakers from Vitali Klitschko’s minority Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms want to cancel the lifelong free access of former presidents and heads of parliament to state residences, transport and medical care.
The deputies say the idea
to remove the privileges was prompted by journalist Sergiy Leshchenko’s story in
Ukrainska Pravda detailing how former top officials continue to enjoy benefits
granted to them more than 20 years ago.
Ex-parliament speakers
have state summer houses, lifelong medication and pensions at 70 percent of
their salaries, thanks to a Soviet-era ruling taken by the presidium of the Verkhovna
Rada of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic back in 1990. The three former Ukrainian
presidents are also entitled to keep lifelong summer houses, medication and their
full presidential salaries by decree of the Ukrainian parliament issued in
1992.
“This is unjust and
abnormal situation that goes back to the USSR,” Pavlo Rozenko, an UDAR lawmaker
told the Kyiv Post. “I think Ukraine should follow the European rulers in this
issue but not to keep the Soviet-level privileges for the former top
officials.”
Rozenko and his
colleagues propose abolishing all privileges for the former heads of parliament.
Security for ex-presidents would, however, be kept for life.
But the lawmaker acknowledged
the legislation to revoke longstanding privileges will be hard to pass, since
members of parliament are loathe to lose their benefits. “Usually the deputies
of [the ruling pro-presidential] Party of Regions and of the Communist Party
don’t approve such initiatives,” Rozenko said. “But we will try to persuade
them; especially we will work with the younger generation of the Regions Party.”
The Party of Regions,
along with its Communist Party and other allies, control the 450-seat
parliament. The breakdown is such: 208 seats for the Party of Regions, 32 for
the Communist Party and 27 unaffiliated. The opposition has 99 seats from
Batkivshchina, 42 seats from UDAR and 36 from the Svoboda Party.
In 2013, Ukraine will
allocate from its budget about Hr 50 million for maintenance of state
residences in the posh Koncha-Zaspa and Pushcha Vodytsia suburbs outside of
Kyiv, where current and former top officials live.
Kyiv
Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
