100 days of the post-Maidan parliament
The experts noted the improvement of the quality of the MP corps, and assessed the creation of the coalition and forming the government as positive events
During a press conference on March 10, parliament speaker Volodymyr Hroisman summed up the first 100 days of the Verkhovna Rada of the 8th convocation. “This is an extremely important period for me, during which we took shape as Ukraine’s parliament, in particular, the coalition was forming too,” said Hroisman in a foreword at the press conference at the Verkhovna Rada. In his speech, Hroisman presented some figures concerning the parliament’s work. So, in these 100 days, 770 individual draft laws were submitted for consideration, 300 of them were reviewed, and 82 were adopted at 33 plenary sessions. “This is optimistic from the point of view of reform implementation,” said the speaker assessing the activity of the Verkhovna Rada.
As for specific legislative actions, the speaker told about significant changes in the legislation in areas of national security and defense, judicial branch, and fight against corruption. Hroisman also touched upon one of the most important issues of the country’s agenda, decentralization. In this respect, he mentioned the law on voluntary assembly of territorial communities, implemented system of finance decentralization, etc. “Without implementation of decentralization based on local authorities elected by the people, we cannot build a quality system in education, healthcare, or economy,” Hroisman said.
The speaker also told about the foreign political aspect of the parliament’s work: “We have stated before the whole world that we are not a non-aligned country and want to intensify cooperation with the NATO countries and integrate into the EU. We make every effort in all international institutions to free our colleague Nadia Savchenko. We have acknowledged that Russia is an aggressor.”
Hroisman also told about the parliament’s further activity, outlined in the Guidelines for the Legislative Provision of Reforms. “We have picked out 300 various documents which must be adopted, 95 of them are comprehensive laws. The majority of plans are set with a deadline before the end of this year, since systemic reforms must be carried out in 2015.”
When answering The Day’s question, the speaker of the parliament also said that creation of the Verkhovna Rada committee on temporarily occupied territories should be expected in the near future.
Hroisman also mentioned the issue of discipline in the parliament and the state of the coalition: “There were few cases of non-personal vote, fights, and other things that taint our image. This should be changed, in particular by developing a code of MPs’ behavior. Culture must be restored. Perhaps, this should be done via technical means.” “I registered changes to the regulations that increase responsibility up to removal from the session room for the next 15 plenary sessions. Hundred days is the first stage, when coalition members understood the formats of interaction among themselves. That is why I assess the situation within the coalition as quite healthy,” Hroisman specified, when answering journalists’ question.
Recently, the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Fund carried out a poll among experts, who evaluated the activity of the Verkhovna Rada during the first 100 days of its operation. So, 31 experts expressed dissatisfaction with the parliament’s activity, and only 10 stated they were satisfied with it. The experts noted the improvement of the quality of the MP corps, and assessed the creation of the coalition and forming the government as positive events. However, the process of budget adoption and deviation from the coalition agreement received negative reviews. In general, the experts evaluated the activity of the Verkhovna Rada of the 8th convocation by giving it 4.2 points out of the possible 10.
