Translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina Siard

19:16:13
10/10/2016

Izvestia.ru

At an extraordinary session of the Kiev’s regional council on October 10th, deputies by majority vote approved the appeal to the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister of the country Vladimir Groysman with the requirement to sign the contract on differentiation between the regional and central power. 57 regional deputies voted “for” of the 84 in total. This was reported by the official website of the council.

Thus, the Kiev regional council became the seventh regional council that is supported by contractual relations with the Cabinet of Minsters.

As was reported on the website of the council, the appeal was passed at the session by deputies from the faction “fatherland”, with the support of the faction “Self-help”, “Opposition bloc”, “UKROP” and “Svoboda”.

Against the appeal were deputies from “Bloc of Petro Poroshenko” (BPP). According to representatives of BPP, such a proposal contradicts the Constitution of Ukraine.

In the appeal of the deputies notes that the reform of decentralization of power has an imitating character. “Given the above, we propose: to consider the issue of transition to contractual relations between the government, local executive bodies and bodies of local governments for the differentiation of powers,” the appeal says.

For the implementation of the contractual relationship, the deputies asked the central government to prepare in coordination with the regional councils draft amendments to the laws of Ukraine “About local government in Ukraine”, “About local state administrations” and the fiscal code of Ukraine.

During the course of consideration of the appeal at the session, the head of the Kiev regional council Anna Starikov said that the party BPP and “Popular Front” do not care about the interests of the communities, and promote their own business interests.

“Did you know that two of the biggest factions in Parliament – BPP and “Popular Front”- in the first reading adopted a unique law for our state on the establishment of offshore zones. And what is it for the state’s economy, what industries and what business operations are subject to these offshore companies? Confectionery, sugar, and bus industry. Do you understand? And a representative of BPP tell us that it is not necessary to consider the appeal on the responsibility of the Cabinet of Minsters for the implementation of programs of socio-economic development. There have already been three years of reforms, it is no longer reforms, but experimentation,” declared Starikov from the podium.

She was supported by the first Deputy Head of the Kiev regional council from the party “UKROP” Vladimir Maybozhenko.

“If the central power is not able to solve people’s problems, then the powers should be shared. Why are you so afraid of this? Our community, it’s us who decide. It’s us who create our state. It’s us who fight for the unity of our country. And after that, schools will have warm radiators, children will be fed, and will drink hot milk,” noted Maybozhenko.

Deputy from the party “Svoboda” Igor Sabiy believes that the differentiation of powers will help the region to act in the interests of Ukrainian citizens.

“We were promised for two years that the war will end. And every time when gas prices rise, when tariffs rise, when the dollar increases, we are told that it’s forbidden to criticize the government, as it will please Moscow. And despite this if someone says something against the government, it means they work for Moscow. We must act in the interests of our citizens – Ukrainians,” said Sabiy.

However, Kiev has a different view about it. As was previously stated by Petro Poroshenko, the proposals of the regional council on the contractual relationship is contrary to the norms of the Constitution.

Already six of the regional councils of Ukraine acted in support of this contractual relationship with the center. The decision of the Odessa regional council was supported by Zhytomyr, Kirovograd, Khmelnytsky, Ivano-Frankivsk and Poltava.

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