Ukraine’s parliament distinguishes itself in many, often unflattering, ways.
Besides regular fistfights, only three members of parliament can
say all of these things: that they stayed loyal to the party that elected them,
were not caught up in corruption or human-rights scandals, came to work at
least 80 percent of the time and always personally voted.
The trio of
lawmakers is a new discovery of Chesno (Honest), a civic movement that designed
a simple online tool for checking on the performance of deputies ahead of the
Oct. 28 election. They plan to use the tool to monitor new candidates, too, and
hope it will help bring to parliament a better cut of representatives.
Six
evaluation criteria were used in the Chesno monitoring: whether the deputy
voted personally, as required by the Constitution; whether they came to work at
least 80 percent of the time; whether they published income declarations as
required by a number of anti-corruption laws; whether they stayed loyal to the
political force that brought them into parliament; and whether they abstained
from corrupt activities and violation of human rights and freedoms.
The only
three deputies who came out clean represent the opposition. They are Oleksandr
Hudyma and Mykola Tomenko, both from the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko, and
Volodymyr Lanoviy of Our Ukraine. Lanoviy was only sworn in at the end of May,
replacing a colleague who died.
“This
campaign is an attempt to answer the question whether we have a choice in
Ukraine, whether the new quality of politics,” said Viktoria Siumar, director
of the Institute of Mass Information, and one of the organizers of the Chesno
movement. “We have only discovered three politicians who fit our criteria, and
a series of deputies who have had very minor violations.”
If those
with minor violations are counted, Ukraine’s parliament would have 20 “clean” members.
Anatoliy Hrytsenko, one of the leaders of the opposition, would have been one
of them.
He is known
for voting personally, but recently confessed in a news program at TVi that he
delegated a key vote to his colleagues while on a trip abroad. Hrytsenko, who
was present at the presentation of the Chesno campaign results on July 23, both
blushed and laughed as his violation was announced.
Oleksandr
Chernenko, head of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine and one of the leaders of
the Chesno campaign, said the new online method for evaluating Rada members
gives citizens an improved research capacity.
“You can’t
compare a deputy who used the mandate as a cover-up for stealing factories and
ships, with a deputy who once failed to vote personally,” he says, suggesting
that the media and public go online to http://www.chesno.org/ and study each individual case.
Oles Doniy,
an opposition deputy who also came to the presentation, was upset with the
results. He failed two criteria: making his income declaration public and
showing up at least 80 percent of the time. He did not challenge his own
performance, but the results of others. He said he was the only deputy of the
current convocation who has never given his personal voting card to anyone else
to use. In a frustrated post of
Facebook, Doniy suggested that the monitoring was dishonest and incomplete.
Organizers
agreed that the monitoring instrument is a work in progress. It reflects the
data that the movement collected from open, reliable sources and will be updated
as more data comes in.
For
example, if some of the deputies decide to make their tax declarations
available, their record will be updated. So far, 379 deputies have either
failed to declare their incomes or explain the gap between their official
incomes and lavish lifestyles.
In general,
however, politicians welcomed the new tool in varying degrees.
Chesno is
also campaigning for parties to disclose their potential candidates early.
The pro-presidential
Party of Regions has not yet made its list public, but promised to do so on
July 30, when the official election campaign kicks off. By contrast, Vitali
Klitchko’s Udar (Punch) party eleased the list of its candidates for majority
constituencies, provoking praise for openness and criticism for poor choice of
people.
Iryna
Bekeshkina, a prominent sociologist, says that Chesno’s civic monitoring
initiative is filling the information gap that is filled in different ways in
democracies such as the United States. Bekeshkina says parties should pay close
attention, particularly at a time when the public’s opinion of the Verkhovna
Rada is at a record low.
“This is very dangerous as in a democratic
society all conflicts should be solved in parliament. But this becomes
impossible when the trust is so low,” Bekeshkina says.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be
reached at [email protected]
Video of the Chesno’s presentation can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l6wDlkuOD0&feature=youtu.be
