2005

CLONING THE STATE BODIES

Implementation of the constitutional reform means less authority for the president. In order to preserve his power, the president issued recently resolutions, which enhanced power of the Secretariat of the President and the Council of National Security and Defence (RNBO). The latter state body must officially include includes representatives, so more authorities were transferred to the RNBO secretary who is personally supervised by the president. Absence of really legislative framework for the Secretariat and the RNBO simultaneously ease presidential efforts to award them with more authorities (just by signing resolutions) and weaken their position because of law uncertainty. Both presidential state bodies has some similar functions and look like competitors; in fact they double each other in a case of legal trials to restrict their authorities after the reform. The reform also means much wider authorities for government, which will gain not only significant independence from the president, but also control over the police, regional executive powers, Ukraine's consolidated budget and ability to influence law-making and financial policy more strongly. There should be presidential attempts to also counterweight complete governmental control over heads of local state administrations after the reform. In addition, because of local elections based on party lists and almost the same participants of the local and nationwide parliamentary elections, the parliamentary speaker, defined by factions of parliamentary majority, will also gain more power. As a result there is high probability of existence of three vertical lines of the power - governmental, the semi-official line of councils and much less official of the president. So a model of the power in a kind of an inequilateral triangle may appear in a year. Now leaders of the country are preparing for that.