Translated material
Disband the army, return the deposits
The "Orange" government will do the impossible
The results of early parliamentary elections in Ukraine have not entered into legal force . Last night, the Supreme Administrative Court prohibited the Central Election Commission from publishing their results in the official media - “Voice of Ukraine” and “Governmental Courier”. The court will consider for five days the claim of communist Sergei Gmyry against the Central Election Commission, whose actions it considers “illegal.”Legal battles over the election results did not prevent the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (Yulya Tymoshenko Bloc) and the Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense (NUNS) presidential bloc from unveiling a coalition agreement yesterday. In the future BYuT government, government positions will be given to them that will allow them to control the main financial flows of the country. Tymoshenko and her associates will receive the positions of prime minister, two deputy prime ministers and nine ministers, including finance, economics, industrial policy, fuel and energy complex, transport and communications, and the coal industry. BYuT will also get the State Property Fund and three state commissions - for regulating the markets for financial services, securities and electricity. And most importantly, the president undertook to coordinate with the Tymoshenko government the candidacies of all governors, whom he had previously virtually appointed alone.
In exchange, the head of BYuT gave the president control over the government's power bloc. Now Yushchenko will submit the candidacies of all security ministers, including the Prosecutor General, for consideration by the Rada. NUNS expects to receive the post of speaker in the Rada, and in the “orange” government the positions of two deputy prime ministers, ten ministerial posts and leadership of the antimonopoly committee.
The coalition agreement includes 12 bills that turn Orange campaign promises into public policy. The most scandalous and difficult to implement are the plans to cancel conscription into the army on January 1, 2008 and to return the savings of Ukrainian depositors of the USSR Savings Bank within two years. Both promises were made by Yulia Tymoshenko before the elections. Former Defense Minister Alexander Kuzmuk said that the proposal to immediately replace conscripts with contract soldiers would lead the army to collapse. As for the money of depositors of Sberbank and Ukrgosstrakh, the total amount exceeds $26 billion, while the revenue side of the 2007 budget is just over $28 billion. To return deposits in two years, Ukraine would have to refuse to finance all social programs .
“Until the information about refusing conscription is confirmed by the president and the minister of defense, it should not be taken seriously. This is a purely political decision, which has not acquired state status and the implementation of which is doubtful,” Ukrainian political scientist Vladimir Fesenko told Vremya Novostei. As for deposits, “there is no mechanism for their return,” therefore “this is a purely political declaration, not supported by economic mechanisms.” It is likely that the amount of Sberbank’s ruble deposits will be converted into hryvnia under such conditions that depositors “will receive significantly less than what was promised.” The government will try to find these funds, VN’s interlocutor believes, by partially “dispossessing” the oligarchs and bringing part of the economy out of the shadows. And six months to a year before the 2009 presidential elections, Tymoshenko herself will resign, accusing the president and his allies of not allowing her to return the deposits to the population, the expert believes.