Petro Poroshenko's Solidarity bloc, along with a number of other political parties, refused to sign a memorandum on the implementation of a number of important anti-corruption norms in local councils.
This was stated in a joint press release by the Transparent Council coalition and the Center for Political Studies and Analysis.
It is noted that the parties "Samopomich", "Ukrop", "Power of People", "Democratic Alliance", "People's Control", "Civic Position" and "Revival" gave their consent to the amendments to the legislation, however, "BPP-Solidarity", "Rodina", the Radical Party, the "Opposition Bloc" and a number of other popular parties refused to sign the memorandum on the introduction of 21 anti-corruption norms in local councils.
"In 2014-2015, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a number of important anti-corruption laws aimed at combating corruption at the local level. However, these regulations have never been implemented in the local councils themselves—city and regional council deputies are sabotaging their implementation. Therefore, it is important for us to receive a public commitment from parties and candidates before the elections that the regulations will be implemented and, ultimately, will become less corrupt and transparent," said Viktor Taran, campaign coordinator and head of the Center for Political Studies and Analysis.
According to the information, the memorandum concerned the norms for the implementation of six laws of Ukraine: "On Local Self-Government," "On Access to Public Information," "On the Status of Local Council Deputies," "On the Prevention of Corruption," "On the Implementation of Public Procurement," and "On Ensuring Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women and Children."
The document provides for the introduction of citizen access to meetings of the city council, its committees, and commissions; the publication of decisions of council and executive committee sessions; a procedure for publishing draft decisions; a procedure for reporting by deputies to the public; a procedure for preventing conflicts of interest; a mechanism for initiating public hearings, local initiatives, and the like.
From October 15 to 20, coalition members signed 163 memoranda at the local level, 68 of which were at the regional branch level and 95 at the city branch level in regional centers.
The press release emphasized that at the regional party level, the parties that signed the memoranda the most were Samopomich (82%), Democratic Alliance and Power of the People (75% each), Civil Position (60%), and Rodina (56%). However, the parties that signed the least were Our Region (30%), Revival (20%), Svoboda (20%), and Opposition Bloc (17%).
At the same time, at the level of city cells of parties in city-regional centers, the parties that sign memoranda the best are “Democratic Alliance” (88%), “Power of People” (83%), “Samopomich” (80%), “Civic Position” (71%) and “Ukrop” (69%), while the worst are “Opposition Bloc” (14%) and “Our Region” (30%).
"The signing of this memorandum clearly demonstrates who's who in Ukrainian politics. It immediately becomes clear who is interested in changing the rules of the game for local councils, and who flatly refuses to implement new anti-corruption regulations. Parties have until Friday to sign the document and join in the cleansing of local councils from Yanukovych's corrupt legacy," Taran emphasized.
The All-Ukrainian Coalition "Transparent Councils" was established in the summer of 2015 and now includes organizations from 17 regions of Ukraine. The coalition's purpose was to monitor local governments' implementation of new anti-corruption regulations.
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