Ukraine's new Cabinet of Ministers has a year to perform. It received this generous time allowance when parliament gave a green light to the plan of action presented by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Dec. 11. Its approval means that the ministers may stay untouchable for 365 days.
But the act was political and left many people fuming. Critics say some parts of the new government program are simply appalling while others are too little, too late.
One of the most common criticisms is that the government’s plan of action has little correlation with the coalition agreement, a 66-page detailed plan with 17 reforms that was approved after more than a month of debates.
“The government program is very sketchy and it doesn’t take into account entire paragraphs of the coalition agreement including infrastructure, transport, public utilities, environment. There is nothing about these sectors in government program,” Oleksandr Chernenko, a lawmaker from President Petro Poroshenko‘s Bloc told the Kyiv Post.
After talking to ruling coalition members for 30 minutes, Yatsenyuk agreed to include the coalition agreement as part of his program, which allowed him to get 269 votes of support. Next, Yatsenyuk said he ordered his ministers to detail an implementation plan.
There is certainly a lot that needs detailing. The reform of law enforcement, for example, is condensed to three sentences. One of them says that police need to serve rather than punish. The next one promises a new law on police and the third brags that an investigation bureau will be created.
Yuriy Lutsenko, a former interior minister and current lawmaker, said he was outraged by this part. “Is it all? What can be done with this sector? How is the structure of the Interior Ministry going to be changed? Where are the concrete terms and responsible people necessary for every program?” he wrote on his Facebook page. Despite his emotions, Lutsenko voted in favor.
The program has clear and concrete parts, too, especially in the areas where the non-governmental sector has been heavily involved over the past months.
Some parts that stem from a trio of Ukraine’s foreign-born ministers have also received praise. According to the plan, the government wants to reduce the number of supervisory bodies that oversees businesses and move towards full adoption of European regulatory standards.
The number of taxes will be cut down from 22 to 9, and more than 1,000 state-owned companies will be privatized. At the same time, the management of strategic state-owned businesses will be changed.
The government promises to ban inspections on small and medium business for two years, and to move forward with an energy saving program and a comprehensive reform of Naftogaz, the state energy behemoth that will require Hr 110 billion in subsidies this year.
Yatsenyuk wants to spend 5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product on defense and security next year, and move the army in line with NATO standards, presumably in hopes of one day joining the 28-nation military alliance. At the same time, other public expenses will be cut by 10 percent, and so will the number of civil servants.
There are also fears that some parts of the program won‘t have the intended effect. Vasyl Yurchyshyn of the Razumkov Center, said that while Yatsenyuk announced a decrease in the tax burden, the government program will do the opposite.
The program envisages new taxation of foreign currency purchases and a new military tax. At the same time, the program postpones the plans to decrease taxation of salaries while promising to up responsibility for violators. “There is some ambiguity on how the government plans to balance the economy,” Yurchyshyn says.
He also said that there is no legal mechanism to control the government’s implementation of the program, except control by foreign donors.
Timothy Ash, head of emerging market research for Standard Bank in London, said the government plans of cost cutting in public administration would probably get an intense opposition inside of state apparatus. “The fight against crucial reforms from within the state beaurocracy is likely to be intense, especially as for the past 20 years it has provided “jobs for the boys” and has been the main agent for corruption and graft,” he wrote in his note to investors.
Lawmakers of all affiliations also slammed Yatsenyuk for failing to even mention decentralization in his new program. After months of debates about the need to grant the more powers to local communities, Yatsenyuk only briefly mentioned power redistribution in his speech in parliament.
“When the entire country speaks about decentralization of power, I didn’t hear anything about it here,” said Volodymyr Parasiuk, a former EuroMaidan Revolution activist turned independent lawmaker.
Opposition Bloc leader Yuriy Boyko said the new government program was “a blueprint” provided by the International Monetary Fund, and Yatsenyuk made no secret in his speech that the nation needs another $15 billion in financing on top of the existing $17 billion package.
“It would be impossible to do this without our international partners,” he said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
