A Constitutional Difference
// Ukraine Has Come a Long Way
The motives of ex-president Kuchma may be questionable, but objectively speaking, the amendments that he introduced in the Ukrainian constitution in 2004 have led to the creation of the necessary conditions for normal political competition. And that is the most important thing, because without political competition, the separation of powers is an empty phrase. In that sense, Ukraine has far outstripped us here in Russia.
Both Russia and Ukraine fall into the category of countries with mixed or semi-presidential forms of government, except that the Russian constitution bears clear traces of the 1992-1993 crisis. Its text contains an invitation to authoritarianism: in all of the unavoidable political conflicts without which there can be no politics per se, the constitution names the president as the victor. So the absence of politics according to this definition is actually dictated by the constitution itself in Russia.
Ukraine has already rethought this dead-end model, and now its constitution is hardly distinguishable from many other European constitutions. The Ukrainians have already done basically the most important thing by making the formation of a government dependent on the breakdown of the parliament by factions, which means that the people are closing in on the ability to define the country's socioeconomic course via parliamentary elections. Of course, so far this is only in theory. It will take a few more years before the people and the politicians really master the idea. But it is fundamentally important that the "log" has been removed from the path to a normal political system.
Unfortunately, Ukraine breezed through the review of its previous government model perhaps a little too quickly. Ukrainians did not learn that the tone is still being set by a generation of Soviet politicians whose negotiating capabilities cannot be relied on. A lack of attention to the details has facilitated the current crisis. The decision to yank the mandate of the Verkhovnya Rada on the basis of each of three constitutional grounds, which are also fairly disputable, was taken by the president after consultations with the chairman of the Rada, his deputies, and the leaders of the different factions. But what does it mean to have done this "after consultations"? That they were merely a formality that was carried out, or was political agreement reached? Yes, the president of France has the authority to so the same thing. But there, political traditions are already well-established.
And yet I would not compare the current situation in Ukraine with the situation in Russia in 1993. Not because we had a presidential style of government then, and not even because by that constitution, which was still Soviet, the president could be removed from his post for practically any reason whatsoever with the help of ridiculously simple procedures, something with which the Supreme Council repeatedly menaced Boris Yeltsin. No, the difference is one of principle. The constitution of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic (the Russian Federation) signed its own death sentence when it combined the fundamental principles of two different types of government: on the one hand, it fixed the separation of powers, but on the other hand, it left the full authority to set the country's political course and to review any matter to the Supreme Council. Although the constitution in force in Ukraine is imperfect, it is still a constitution with democratic principles.
Mikhail Krasnov, a former legal advisor to President Yeltsin and a specialist on constitutional law
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 09, 2007
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