The number of stupid ideas and initiatives that has emerged since the end of the traditional mid-winter break is truly stunning.
Here are a couple of my favorites that were made public in the past week.
Oleh Tsariov, a Party of Regions deputy who came to parliament through a majority constituency in Dnepropetrovsk Oblast, filed a draft law on Jan. 22 called “On stimulation of the domestic market of food.” The basic idea behind it, according to the author, is to stimulate such a market by forcing all supermarkets and other large retailers to move out of the cities, and allowing them to only operate between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m., Mondays through Saturdays. Working on Sundays will be outlawed, as will shops in the city operating in premises of more than 300 square meters.
The closest grocery store would be five kilometers outside the city limits, so you have to take a good drive to get your carrots – that is, if you are lucky enough to own a car. The rationale, according to the author, is because large retailers are killing small and medium business by making direct deals with consumers to ensure low prices for end consumers. Small businesses, Tsariov argues, cannot compete because their supply chain has a number of intermediaries all taking their cut.
Moreover, the defender of medium and small business suggests his own rules for contracts between retailers and suppliers. He suggests that time of payment should be strictly regulated (45 days), as well as markups (20 percent in 2013, 15 percent as of next year). He offers to limit the presence of any retailer to 10 percent of all trading spaced in a town or village, and says private labels of each retailer cannot exceed 10 percent of supply of a particular product.
Tsariov’s new legal initiative would be disastrous for both the retail sector and city residents who would be limited in their ability to shop for food and basic goods. Thankfully, his draft has received extremely critical reviews from both his political rivals and the Party of Regions, and there already are indications that the author will back out.
Ihor Miroshnychenko, a new lawmaker elected on the Svoboda Party ticket and already infamous for his anti-Jewish statements, is now suggesting to tighten control over, and possibly even ban, foreign adoptions in Ukraine. He said on Jan. 18 that adoptions by foreigners “have turned into a business” that needs to be stopped. He also explained what a “normal family” is: one that has children. It’s a real relief that someone at last has been elected to parliament who can decide for us what a normal family should be.
Oleh Tiahnybok, the leader of Svoboda’s minority opposition faction, came out in support of the ban of adoptions. “We’re convinced that in the conditions of a deep demographic crisis and after Ukraine survived the horrors of Holodomor (artificial famine), one cannot so easily give out to foreigners one of the main treasures of the nation – its gene pool,” Tiahnybok said on Jan. 19.
Who cares about the welfare of children? In fact, who cares that they are living human beings? For Tiahnybok, they are the gene pool that has to be preserved, and it does not matter that those orphans live in conditions bordering on inhumane.
Svoboda’s comments on adoptions come just days after Russia banned foreign adoptions through the so-called Dima Yakovlev law, which came into effect on Jan. 1. The law was created in response to the Magnitsky law in America, which introduced sanctions against Russian officials implicated in the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer and human rights activist, in 2009, and other human rights violators.
Ukraine, on the contrary, has been taking steps to ease foreign adoptions lately, but Svoboda’s recent statements have indicated that progress might not be so smooth this year.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].
