Vladimir Groysman
The main violator of Ukrainian laws is Speaker Volodymyr Groysman, a protégé of Petro Poroshenko.
We seem to have the most progressive parliament in the history of independence. And it's strange that it passes laws, just as it did during the dictatorship—at the last minute and without proper debate. If this continues, the current Rada could become as inglorious as its predecessors, and the country will be faced with contradictory, impossible-to-implement laws. It could even slide into authoritarianism. To prevent this, the Verkhovna Rada must strictly adhere to its rules of procedure. But the bar for respect for the law and procedure among deputies, and especially party leaders, has already fallen so low that things could get even worse.
"Look, the bill has been submitted to the Rada for two days now, and these insolent MPs still haven't passed it! What are they doing there?!" Outraged voices are heard from voters everywhere. "I just registered the bill, and I demand an immediate vote," a member of parliament shouts from the podium, echoing the voices of the people. And, of course, if the speaker refuses to comply, or if someone refuses to press the "yes" button, they are all enemies of Ukraine and lackeys of the oligarchs.
"What breaks? Consultations? We elected them to work, and they did nothing, they spoke and then left again," one can hear the righteous anger of Ukrainians. "How much longer can we discuss?! Vote!" the MPs shout in unison. "In all readings! Ukraine is in danger!"
The funniest thing is that most of those who curse parliament for stupid laws don’t even think about the fact that the laws are bad precisely because they are passed hastily and without observing the necessary procedures.
This was the case with the odious regional laws on languages and referendums, with the dictatorial "laws of January 16," and the current convocation of the Rada adopted changes to tax and budget legislation and the budget for 2015 in exactly this way.
But Parliament is not just a gathering of button pushers who must compete in the speed of button pressing and the amount of waste paper voted.
Roughly translated from French, "parliament" literally means "talking shop," because the role of the legislative body is to discuss legislative initiatives as comprehensively and democratically as possible. And it is precisely this discussion and coordination, the lion's share of which takes place not in the chamber under the dome, but in committees, meetings, and working groups, that is the crucible of quality legislation.
The Verkhovna Rada's Rules of Procedure, which, incidentally, are not simply internal rules and laws of Ukraine, outline a clear procedure for the consideration and adoption of bills.
Time for consideration of bills by committees, experts and the public
After a bill is registered, the relevant committees, as well as the parliament's scientific, expert, and legal departments, have 30 days to prepare their opinions on the bill, according to the rules of procedure. Anyone who thinks this is too long is mistaken—after all, there are quite a few bills, and the committees and parliamentary services are overloaded with their analysis. The 30-day deadline, established by Article 93 of the Rules of Procedure, stipulates that registered bills should not be submitted to the floor within this timeframe.
This time, incidentally, can be used not only by Rada committees and departments, but also by the public and experts outside parliament. The forced passage of bills is organized, not least of all, to ensure that no one has time to read them carefully, and if anyone does, they don't have time to warn the public and their fellow deputies.
And only when a month has passed and there are no conclusions from the committee, the Rada has the right to consider the draft at a plenary session.
Of course, under certain circumstances, both the committee and the experts may review projects more quickly, but the timeframe must still be reasonable. And in any case, it's considered manipulation when it's less than 14 days (see below for reasons why).
Moreover, after the committee's conclusions are presented to deputies, the bill may be considered "under the table" no sooner than seven days later. This requirement of Article 112 of the regulations is entirely logical—after all, each deputy or faction must have time to analyze all the conclusions and develop its own position. And this is not just a formality, but a genuine need, especially considering the large number of bills submitted to the session.
Alternative bills
Article 100 of the Rules of Procedure gives members of parliament 14 days to submit alternative bills on the same issue. All alternative bills are considered jointly by committees and at plenary sessions and are put to the vote in the order in which they are registered. Alternative bills are a crucial tool for democracy and for improving the quality of lawmaking.
It allows for a full range of approaches to a given issue to be explored and discussed together. Deputies can adopt the best option as a basis and incorporate any useful insights from other alternative drafts during the second reading.
Therefore, authors of legislative initiatives who are unsure of the quality of their projects try to circumvent this procedure. To do this, they violate the regulations in two ways.
The first is as simple as doors - simply don't give colleagues time to submit alternatives and vote straight away.
The second is to register your project not as an alternative to the existing one on this topic, but as a supposedly completely separate law.
First and second reading
Only one bill may be adopted as the basis (for the first reading), and that is the text submitted by its authors. Any amendments "by voice" are out of the question. Legislation is such a delicate matter that even a misplaced comma can carry significant weight.
Can the Verkhovna Rada adopt a bill in its entirety as law? Yes, it can, but only if no member of parliament, much less a committee or faction, objects.
If such objections exist, no matter how much the speaker or the majority wishes, this cannot be done. The second reading is one of the most important procedures designed to ensure the democratic nature and quality of laws.
Article 116 of the Rules of Procedure gives each member of parliament 14 days to submit amendments to a bill adopted in the first reading. These amendments are clearly written and substantiated. Can the Rada shorten this 14-day period? Yes, it can. But not to "tomorrow or the day after," as is often the case, but to at least seven days.
After this, each amendment is carefully studied by the relevant committee, and its members vote to fully or partially accept it, or reject it, thus forming the text of the bill for the second reading.
All amendments (both accepted and rejected) are entered into a special table, which, together with the committee's conclusion and the final text of the bill, is distributed to deputies no less than 10 days before the bill is considered in the second reading.
At the plenary session, each author of a rejected amendment may speak out with a justification for their amendment and insist on its support by the floor.
After this, the amendment is put to a vote, and if it receives 226 votes, it is adopted despite the committee's position. Conversely, any member of parliament who opposes an amendment adopted by the committee may submit it for approval.
If 226 votes are not received, the relevant portion of the bill remains in its first reading version. Only after all amendments have been submitted (which can sometimes take many hours) is the bill put to a vote as a whole.
Sometimes deputies don't care about procedures and regulations
Agenda of the meeting
To formulate the agenda, committees submit proposals to the parliamentary conciliation council. Participants in this council meeting make amendments to the proposed schedule for a week or two.
After this, in accordance with Article 73 of the Rules of Procedure, the Conciliation Council must make a decision by vote. For a decision to pass, it must be supported by representatives of factions that together have at least 226 votes. This would seem to be a simple and correct procedure. But anyone who has attended meetings of the Conciliation Council knows that in practice, no votes take place.
Deputies make proposals to add or remove projects from the schedule, but these proposals are never put to a vote. The Council Speaker either agrees with the speaker, disagrees, or simply remains silent, leaving the deputy's proposal hanging in the air.
Such manipulations will allow the Speaker to freely interpret the results of the Conciliation Council and determine the daily schedule. And, incidentally, if the Conciliation Council fails to make decisions, it formally has the right to do so.
The agenda for a plenary session must be published no later than 6:00 PM the day before, and no changes should be made to it after that. In practice, changes can occur both overnight and in the morning.
It goes without saying that parliamentary leadership ignores deadlines for preparing bills for consideration and can throw bills into the chamber that were registered literally yesterday.
Button coding
Article 37 of the Rules of Procedure stipulates that members of parliament must vote only in person and must not have the technical ability to violate this rule. However, proxy voting remains a shameful practice in the Rada.
Cases of button-pressing have been recorded in most factions and groups, and deputies of the pro-Prime Minister People's Front have made this violation routine, with little attempt to hide it. Meanwhile, the current Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada—now the fourth speaker—is in no hurry to install the long-promised "touch button" or criminalize button-pressing.
What Violations Lead to: A Recent Example
To illustrate how violating the rules of procedure actually harms lawmaking, let's take just one example among many. And this isn't even the budget or the code amendments, which, when adopted in December, deputies not only violated everything possible, but simply acted as if the rules of procedure didn't exist. Let's take a closer look at how parliament considers judicial reform bills.
To implement the coalition agreement, deputies from various factions registered draft law No. 1497, developed by experts, in December.
The president, who was supposed to act in concert with the coalition, suddenly decided a few days later to introduce his own bill on the same issue. He has every right to do so.
But (!) for some reason the presidential bill is not registered as an alternative (No. 1497-1), but with a completely new number, 1656. Why was such a gross violation of the Rules of Procedure important to the president and his fellow party speaker?
Because if the bill had been properly registered, it would have been considered together with the main bill and submitted to the vote second. Considering that Bill No. 1497 was clearly of high quality and, unlike the presidential bill, did not contradict the Constitution, the second bill had no chance. Therefore, the speaker attempted to submit Bill No. 1656 separately for consideration by the floor, completely "forgetting" about the main bill. Only the scandal raised by deputies and the public forced the Rada to consider the bills together.
However, no investigation was ever conducted into who and why registered the presidential bill under an unacceptable number. Coalition deputies decided to hush up the matter and reached a "compromise." They passed two bills at first reading—Nos. 1497 and 1656—to satisfy the ambitions of the president and his faction. Thus, one violation led to another.
Accepting two bills, which are de facto alternatives, as a basis for the debate is a remarkably absurd decision. After all, it's unclear to which text the deputies should submit amendments, and how the committee should consider them. Clearly, there's simply no way out of this situation without further violations of regulations and arbitrary manipulation of the texts of both bills.
It's impossible to imagine such a decision in any European parliament. And even with their "creative" approach to regulations, Ukrainian legislators have never done anything like this before. However, the bar for respect for the law and procedure among MPs, and especially party leaders, has already fallen so low that things could get even worse.
The main offender is the speaker
The Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada undoubtedly plays a key role in the violations of the Rules of Procedure. And the only way to stop them is by uniting the efforts of all deputies who are dissatisfied with the loss of the current coalition's potential due to the parliament being turned into a circus.
Recently, several members of parliament even formed an inter-factional association for the observance of the Rules of Procedure. The quality of this parliament's work, without exaggeration, depends on how consistently the participants in this initiative defend the Rules of Procedure from manipulation by the speaker or the prime minister.
Clearly, Ukrainians overthrew the Yanukovych regime not for the sake of a change in leadership, but so that freedom, justice, and democracy would reign in Ukraine. And democracy is, above all, a matter of procedure. That's why the Rules of Procedure had to be strictly adhered to when considering all matters in the Verkhovna Rada without exception.
Taras Shamaida, published in the publication Texti.UA
Translation: Argument
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