You're reading: Lawmaker Sotnyk: Authorities chase quantity, not quality in reforming Ukraine

“More haste, less speed” – so the old English proverb goes. And going by what Samopomich Party lawmaker Olena Sotnyk says, it’s an apt saying to apply to Ukraine’s legislative process and its effect on the pace of reform in the country.

Sotnyk, who was elected
to parliament for the first time in October, was a career lawyer, specializing in corporate and criminal law, who found
herself thrust onto the political stage by Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution.
After less than a year in the legislature, she’s not impressed by parliament’s
hectic working practices.

“People want quick
changes, but there won’t be any high quality changes without high quality study
of the documents. It’s impossible,” Sotnyk told the Kyiv Post.

Between 20 and 30
drafts laws are registered in the Verkhovna Rada every day, and parliament
conducts up to 50 votes a week. To squeeze all that lawmaking into the
available time, lawmakers are forced to cut corners, spending just a few
minutes presenting new legislation and hearing a couple of speakers for and
against a bill.

This, in turn, affects
the quality of legislation, she said.

Moreover, since few
lawmakers have the expertise to draw up proper legislation, they often fail to
provide required financing calculations beforehand and don’t think through the
effects of their laws, Sotnyk said. The hasty approval of such bills act foremost
as an impediment to the reform process.

“Who benefits from this
rush? Those who have a big staff of lawyers and assistants,” Sotnyk said.

“The government also
benefits because then it can “check a task off the reform” list, she added. Not
many lawmakers, said Sotnyk, understand that passing a law does not necessarily
mean they’re conducting reform.

“An adopted law is not
an implemented reform. It’s an illusion. An adopted law is only the first step,”
Sotnyk said.

Adding to the problems are
the actual lawmakers, according to the former lawyer. They boast of how many
drafts they’ve prepared, how many speeches they’ve given, and how many
amendments they’ve suggested.

“For me these are
mythical criteria for measuring the effectiveness of the lawmaker or the
government,” she says.

Sotnyk always takes a
stance on important legislation. A petite and graceful figure in a legislature dominated
by men, she fearlessly wades into heated debates about topics that have traditionally
been considered male concerns – law enforcement, the courts, and fighting
corruption. But she says she didn’t enter parliament to play politics.

“I wasn’t intending to
go into politics, I wanted to enter parliament as a lawmaker,” said Sotnyk. “I
have 12 years of law practice, and I see parliament first of all as the body
that creates rules for the whole of society to obey.”

However, she said it
was very difficult to retain the cool, professional approach of a lawyer in the
“overly politicized Ukrainian parliament.”

“Parliament must cut
the populism. Everyone is working from election to election – that’s very
clear,” she said.

The Verkhovna Rada
worked “constructively” for three months, cutting state expenses and working on
important social issues that were “necessary” and “painful,” she said.

This changed when local
elections were scheduled for October and “many party members of parliament became
different people,” Sotnyk said.

“Their rhetoric changed
immediately, their priorities changed. Now they will be afraid of radical
reforms, as these could hurt their political ratings,” she said.

Public pressure is also
forcing lawmakers to for vote bills they themselves don’t like, but that are in
strong demand in society, she observed.

“Because of this
(pressure), we forced through the bill on property registers. No one really
wanted to adopt it,” Sotnyk said, referring to a law passed by Parliament on
July 14 that makes property registers public. The bill was designed to prevent
corruption among officials.

She pointed to other
successes. She was among those championing the adopted laws on local elections,
the gas market, the national police force and the accounting chamber.

More remains to be
done, however. A law is needed to make the regulator of energy and utilities
independent and transparent, and a bill on state service that would differentiate
politicians from civil servants.

The main problem,
according to Sotnyk, is that Ukraine still lacks an overall concept of reform.

“The key problem for me
is the absence of an economic strategy – a stylish promotional video is not
enough,” Sotnyk said, referring to a video produced by the Economy Ministry.

“Any foreigner will ask
us if we can show them a strategy,” she said. “Why should they invest in our
pharmaceuticals, agriculture, infrastructure or information technology when we
don’t have proper legal defense in our courts, our tax legislation is unclear and
changes every two months, and our law enforcement is a mess?”

Sotnyk said all the government
bodies should first jointly decide what Ukraine should be like, how everything
should work, and how to achieve it. Only then do laws need to be designed – in
line with the approved strategy.

“But everyone is
hysterically rushing about, (and) everyone has their own vision about where they’re
rushing to. There’s no unified vision,” Sotnyk said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Alyona Zhuk can be reached at [email protected]