Four representatives of the parliamentary majority
decided to legally
prohibit citizens
from making copies of government documents, as well as to adopt an
obligatory payment “at a stated time” for any documents exceeding
ten pages. In real terms, these allegedly technical changes are an
attempt to legitimize the practice of selectively responses to
citizens’ information request, and those requests regarding
officials’ property and income in particular.
That selective responses are
already an issue, and has been subject of research by the
national monitoring campaign aimed at investigating the way of life
of high-ranking officials, “Declarations without Decorations”.
Their summer and
early fall has been devoted
to gathering data
on asset
declarations of
ministers, heads of regional administrations,
mayors of regional centers and their deputies. In
total, around 400 high officials’
declared assets
and income will
be
examined
by
civic
controllers,
to see if they match those officials’ actual
lifestyles.
The first results of the civic
activists’ and bureaucrats’ communication are disappointing,
especially considering the fact that the openness of data in
officials’ declarations is guaranteed by not just one, but two laws
of Ukraine – “On Access to Public Information” and “On
Prevention and Combat of Corruption.”
Experienced bureaucrats systematically find more and more ways to
deny people their right to know. For instance, Lutsk City Council and
Mayor Mykola Romaniuk decided to classify information about the
general city plan, the salaries of council staff, and data on asset
declarations as
inside information (therefore, restricted for society).
According to the mayor’s opinion, disclosure of
this information “can lead to violation of a human’s
constitutional rights and freedoms, cause losses to the territorial
community, and inhibit the council’s work”. It is two minutes’
work for a lawyer to prove that this initiative of Lutsk’s mayor
goes against the law.
The Government of the Autonomous
Republic of Crimea went even further. The governors, headed by
Anatoliy Mohyliov, decided not to provide information on Crimean high
officials, reasoning that “asset, income, expenses declarations and
financial obligations that have been compiled according to the Law of
Ukraine On Prevention and Combat of
Corruption have confidential personal
data.” Hereby the civic controllers yellow-carded Mohyliov, and
filed
an administrative claim
against him. In fact, a similar wording was used by the State Service
of Statistics, which tuned out information requests and suggested
the activists look for declarations in mass media. The State Archival
Service and the National Agency of Ukraine on Civil Service first
refused to provide information on their directors; however, having
double-checked the law, they changed their mind and provided
everything requested.
The most curious thing is the
overcautious bodies’ position on the impossibility of personal data
disclosure completely contradicts the position of the country’s
main controller. The State Service of Ukraine on Personal Data
Protection provided the civic activists with duly certified copies of
declarations with
all personal data of their heads
(i.e. their passport series and numbers, postal codes and addresses).
It seems many
officials feel the law is subject to their own personal
interpretation.
What about the government,
particularly, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine? The Cabinet’s
Secretariat asked the civic activists to give them twenty additional
working days to gather the declarations of Premier Minister Mykola
Azarov, First Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov, and several other
deputies. The countdown began on September 17th
of this year.
Of course, regional
bodies stay abreast of the actions of their senior colleagues. It is
ironic that the least open declarations are the ones from the
territories directly involved in the
international Open Government Partnership initiative.
Other than the aforementioned Lutsk, both Dnipropetrovsk Regional
State Administration and Kyiv City State Administration blackout
their declarations.
The first stage of monitoring
shed light on one more problem: Ukrainian public bodies are as poor
as church mice; there is no other explanation for the demand of
Kherson City Council to pay Hr 5.74 per each page of a declaration.
This, by the way, is the
highest rate in
Ukraine. Ternopil’s rate for this service is Hr 0.88, and the rate
of Khmelnytskiy City Council is even less: Hr 0.18 per page. That’s
probably the reason why Ukrainian authorities tell civic activists to
get lost. Where? – in media. That’s exactly where they recommend
to look for the declarations of ministers Dmytro Tabachnyk, Raisa
Bohatyrova and Vitaliy Zakharchenko.
But there’s some light at the
end of the tunnel. The first stage of monitoring has proven that not
more than 5 percent of central public bodies, and not more than
twenty percent of local ones try to blackout their assets.
It means that there’s still the
right for Ukrainian people to know how primi
inter pares (first
among equal) live for the citizens’
money.
Oleksii Khmara ais head of Transparency International Ukraine, an anti-corruption watchdog. Anatolii Stoian is a representative of the same organization.
