Mustafa Nayyem, a newly elected member of parliament and one of Ukraine’s most famous journalists, put the spotlight on low salaries for public service as an invitation to corruption.
Nayyem, whose tweet on Nov. 21, 2013, ignited the EuroMaidan
Revolution that toppled President Victor Yanukovych, said his salary of less
than $500 as a member of parliament is not enough to live on in Kyiv.
A few days after the Oct. 26 election, Nayyem dropped a bombshell
on a TV political talk show: “If at the parliament we decide that an MP should
live on 5,000 hryvnias, then we must admit that the state at this stage is not
ready to provide conditions for the honest work of an MP. Then we have to say
that those young people who now got into the parliament do not have a chance to
stay there.”
Other newly elected members of parliament also expressed
dissatisfaction.
Activist Hanna Hopko, who was at the top of the Samopomich
(Self-Help) party that drew more than 11 percent of votes, said that three
members of the party refused to run for office because of the low pay.
Investigative journalist Serhiy Leshchenko, elected to the bloc
of President Petro Poroshenko along with Nayyem, supported his colleague.
Leshchenko wrote a blog headlined “If society refuses to pay an
MP, the oligarchs will.” The oligarchs will then use their influence over the
members of parliament to rob the Ukrainian people, so it is a lose-lose
scenario, concluded Leshchenko.
MPs salaries were lowered in July.
Oksana Syroyid, an activist lawyer elected through the
Samopomich party list, calls this measure pure populism. “In fact, it is a
direct encouragement to the MPs to seek for ways to improve their material
situation,” Syroyid said.
In the old parliament, MPs who did not own businesses received
“cash subsidies” from their party bosses. In his recent interview, Mustafa told
the new media that slush funds were used to pay deputies $500 for not showing
up at the parliament during a vote, $1,000 for abstaining from a vote and $2,000
for initiating an inquiry.
There were ways to make much bigger amounts.
In 2012, Yushchenko’s bloc MP Oles Doniy told Radio Liberty that
he was once offered $10 million in cash to vote against ex-Prime Minister Yulia
Tymoshenko’s candidacy for the post. According to Doniy, during Yanukovych
times, MPs were paid not only to switch factions for the pro-government one,
but were offered monthly support of $20,000 to stay there.
Tymoshenko-led Batkivshchyna member of parliament Roman
Zabzalyuk went even further. In 2012, he said that he took the bribe of $450,000
to switch from the opposition faction to the Yanukovych bloc as an experiment.
Afterwards, he gave the money away to his native faction and was admitted back
to Batkivshchyna.
It is obvious that low salaries of state officials make them
more prone to corruption. Yet, the most
common public response to complaints about low pay is anger in a nation where
many live in poverty.
In the West, public officials earn much more.
The
idea of linking MP salaries to Ukraine’s minimum wage is still popular. Another
proposed solution is reduction of the number of MPs from 450 to 300, as well as
the reduction of the number of state officials overall.
Apart from the low official salary and opportunities for
corruption, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada members have many perks, including free
car rides, air travel, accommodation, meals, recreation and allowances for
assistants.
As a journalist, Leshchenko advocated stripping MPs and other
public servants of those free benefits, since they cost the state too much.
Many of the new MPs say they would prefer higher salaries to state privileges.
The
debate extends to the low salaries of civil servants in Ukraine, especially
those in law enforcement and courts. Civil society experts argue that
investigators of the future anti-corruption bureau should receive salaries
comparable to the private sector.
In Ukraine, too many MPs are entrenched in the oligarchic system
and are so rich that they don’t even need the nominal official pay for their
positions. Their goals in parliament are further enrichment and protection of
their businesses.
The MPs who are actually preparing reformist laws and are trying
to change the country are often the poor ones.
Lawmaker Victor Chumak who pushed for anti-corruption
legislation, said he has only $1,000 a month to hire assistants. “I do not know
how to survive,” Chumak said.
Editor’s Note:This article is part of the Kyiv Post’s Reform Watch project, sponsored by the International Renaissance Foundation. Content is independent of the financial donors. The newspaper is grateful to the sponsors for supporting Ukraine’s free press and making specialized coverage of reforms possible through this project.
