“Life is decentralized”
The draft Constitution from Poroshenko, as you know, was developed with the aim of implementing that very “decentralization”. What does this Poroshenko-style decentralization look like?
She looks very strange, to say the least. Let's go through the points.
1. The President receives the right to early termination of the powers of the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (and the US Congress, of course...) or a local government body if the Constitutional Court has declared the decision of this body unconstitutional (by the way, the bodies under the project also include rural and city mayors... ).
Currently, government bodies do not have the constitutionally approved right to dissolve local and regional self-government bodies at all. Article 85 established the right of parliament to dissolve the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea ahead of schedule “if there is a conclusion of the Constitutional Court that it has violated the Constitution of Ukraine.” Actually, it was on this basis that the Crimean parliament was dissolved in March of this year, which, however, did not affect its activities in any way.
2. The same article adds the right of the president, upon the proposal of the presidential representative, to stop the action of a decision of a local government body due to its non-compliance with the Constitution, while simultaneously appealing to the Constitutional Court.
It looks a little strange to suspend a decision while simultaneously going to court. In theory, the court should suspend the effect of the controversial decision until the case is examined on the merits.
3. Instead of regional and district administrations, the institution of presidential representatives is being introduced, with control (in terms of compliance with the Constitution and laws by local governments) and administrative (coordination of territorial executive authorities).
Here it is only worth noting that coordinating the work of territorial departments of central ministries is a fairly significant piece of authority. After all, these bodies include, for example, departments of justice, the Department of Internal Affairs, the Department of Internal Affairs, the Department of Internal Affairs, branches of the National Bank, etc. That is, if desired, the presidential representative himself will be able to block the work of local government bodies.
4. Another level of self-government is added. If now in Ukraine there are regions and districts, then according to the presidential project there are regions, districts and communities (communities), uniting one or more settlements.
Why it was necessary to rename the regions into regions remains unclear to me, especially since the regions remain regions. Probably to include among them the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Kyiv and Sevastopol, which are not regions, although they are administrative units.
By the way, the project removes the question of consolidation (or disaggregation - the projects were different) of areas. It is interesting that the project appears at a time when the Rada is developing the unification of the Kherson region and Crimea, and Kolomoisky proposes the unification of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions under the leadership of Medvedchuk...
Actually, the “hulkization” adventure has already been discussed several times in the media. Formally, the goal is to bring government services closer to the population - if now you have to go to the regional center to get a certificate, then under the new project - to the neighboring village, the center of the community. In practice, the existing road and transport infrastructure is connected specifically with regional centers, so services will not come closer, but will move away, which will lead to the elimination of a mass of unpromising villages and towns. Plus a radical consolidation of districts. In the Kherson region, for example, out of 18 districts, three should remain, which will make the services provided at the district level completely fantastic...
5. Executive power at the level of regions and districts is transferred to the executive committees of the relevant councils.
I note that executive committees are also mentioned in the current version of the Constitution, and according to the law on local self-government they can exercise certain powers. As a rule, they do not do this, since these powers are delegated to administrations. But since there are no administrations, then powers can only be delegated to the executive bodies of lower councils.
It is interesting that the fragment devoted to the rights of regional councils and regional executive committees is deliberately vague - they have powers that “can best be exercised at this level.” And there is a charming uncertainty about who and how determines what is implemented in the best way and what is not implemented in the best way. If there is a reference to the law regarding the powers of self-government bodies at the locality level (by the way, there is a mistake in the text, because there are no cities, villages and settlements according to the project anymore - there are only communities), then in the case of the district and regional levels there is no such reference ...
By the way, the draft states that self-government can be exercised by citizens directly, but the reference to a local referendum from Article 143 miraculously disappeared...
6. In the section on the material and financial basis of self-government, part of the national taxes is mentioned, which, of course, is very positive, but, in essence, does not change anything. Self-government still has the right to a portion of national taxes through subsidization mechanisms from the central budget. A real step would be to determine that self-government can use these means directly and with reference to the law. Then the Constitution would directly require a revision of the budget system according to the “bottom-up” principle. And so - a quarter hint of a semi-circumstance...
7. Local councils may grant special status to the Russian language and other languages of national minorities.
What “special status” is, for example, is not clear to me. If we are talking about the constitutional implementation of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, then it would be worthwhile to name the status in accordance with the current (but unenforced) law.
I don’t even want to argue that the Russian language in Ukraine is not a language of a national minority. The authors of the project simply emphasized that Ukraine still remains a nationalist and non-Ukrainian state.
The findings are disappointing.
Firstly, the project is completely ugly in terms of internal logic and simple errors. Apparently, the administration was in a hurry...
Secondly, decentralization in the project comes down only to the elimination of the vertical executive power, but the powers of the president in relation to local governments are only growing.
Thirdly, there remains a large gap regarding the powers of territorial self-government bodies (region - district). Something tells me that this was not done by chance, namely with the aim of greater centralization.
Fourthly, the introduction of a new system of self-government bodies creates a mess, which in itself excludes the possibility for local governments to manage anything.
In general, the project is not aimed at expanding the rights of self-government, but rather represents a technological mechanism for “preserving territorial integrity.” But such technologies do not work in modern Ukraine - “people’s republics” are being created in the East of the country, and in the West the Maidans are expelling officials appointed by Kiev from their offices... And the powers of self-government have absolutely nothing to do with it.
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