Bankova VS Klitschko: why the temporary investigative commission on Kyiv?
In the media, there are increasingly frequent reports about the work of the temporary investigative commission to investigate the work of city officials. “Klychko is summoned to the council to report on the flooded subway,” “The condition of Poshtova Square requires urgent verification,” and other headlines in the media have appeared since the temporary investigative commission was created in parliament.
This temporary investigative commission has become a platform for news about Kyiv and the capital’s government, of course, with a negative connotation. But here we need to talk not only about what the Kyiv city government does or doesn’t do but also about what the central government hasn’t done.
The conflict between the Bankova and the Mayor of Kyiv is actually eternal, and every president has tried to take control of the Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA). It’s an opportunity to influence the capital, where the government quarter is located.
For instance, when Viktor Yanukovych was elected president, he made an unconstitutional appointment – Oleksandr Popov became the head of the KCSA, although according to the conclusions of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, this position should have been held exclusively by the mayor elected by the community. Chernovetskyi did not challenge the appointment, as he publicly stated, and in 2012, he quietly resigned from the position of mayor.
The legislative field has not changed since then, and as before, the president cannot appoint his own person as the head of the KCSA. Thus, Zelenskyi now has to tolerate whoever the residents of Kyiv elected until the central government completes the reform and divides the powers between the head of the KCSA and the mayor. This is the bill “On the Capital”.
However, the war has given the Office of the President additional tools. Now there is an opportunity to create and appoint heads of military administrations. Currently, military administrations are operating in Kyiv and the region, although Kyiv region is not a front-line territory. This allows keeping those who need to be kept under pressure, and if necessary, to launch information gathering through military administrations to form political passports (who supports the mayor, who controls the majority in local councils, who is the leader of public opinion, etc.). This is, of course, something that temporary investigative commissions of the Verkhovna Rada do not investigate, although the use of military administrations to create political passports is pure administrative resource.
There have been cases where mayors were illegally removed from office in cities, and then military administrations sought to strengthen the role of the presidential vertical in such communities. Accordingly, we need to understand what criteria we will have for creating military administrations so that they perform important functions for the state and the body that should act as a military administration does not become a political headquarters for making political passports or imagine itself as an acting mayor and does not start playing politics.
So when we talk about central and local government, everything always comes down to… powers and resources allocated for their execution.
In the country, the decentralization reform has been ongoing for over 10 years, and we should finally come to a point where we properly distribute powers and financial resources. That is, it should be clear which bodies perform which functions, as well as the funds they have for carrying out these functions.
If we talk about the head of the Kyiv community and the head of the KCSA in one person, then the combination of state and local government functions does not correspond to the nature of decentralization and the European Charter of Local Self-Government.
Who is to blame that this has not changed over the past years? This is the responsibility of the Verkhovna Rada, which has currently launched the work of a temporary investigative commission. It’s easier than completing the reform.
The central government had a historic opportunity five years ago at the start, which no political force had before: they formed a single-party majority. From the very beginning, it was clear that as long as there are voices in the session hall of the Verkhovna Rada, this gives a chance to prepare and vote for the necessary laws for the country. Of course, martial law added its own corrections.
We are talking about legislative initiatives:
- On local self-government
- On the capital (work has been done on it substantively since the beginning of this term, but it has not reached the final text and voting, and it should divide the powers of the mayor and the head of the KCSA)
- On local state administrations (bill 4298 was stuck between the first and second readings, although it is important in the context of European integration. It should provide for state supervision of the acts of local self-government bodies)
- On military administrations (important transparency in the procedure for their creation and abolition)
And all these legislative initiatives together are the reform.
And it would be great if we finally moved from tools that give someone a sense of political play and headlines in the media dissecting the flights of local government to solving not just one issue, but carrying out a comprehensive reform. And this is already a task with a star for the parliament.
Specially for “Glavkom“
