Parliamentary detective. Where did the bill banning the UOC-MP go?

The Moscow church has quarreled the Verkhovna Rada: there is a scandal between the people's deputies and the Verkhovna Rada Apparatus

While the Verkhovna Rada is on break from session work, real passions are boiling behind the scenes. The reason for another outburst of emotions was a long-standing parliamentary “debt” - the ultra-sensitive government project No. 8371 on the ban on the Moscow Church in Ukraine. This religious organization operates under the brand of the UOC (MP). The bill was voted in the first reading back in October, after which its further passage was stopped at the level of the Verkhovna Rada Apparatus. The specialized committee on humanitarian and information policy, which finalized the project and made changes, completed work on it three weeks ago. But all this time, neither the comments of the Main Legal Directorate for the second reading nor the comparative table with amendments appeared on the parliament’s website.

The leaders of the mono-majority, who were already looking for various reasons not to put a politically sensitive church issue to a vote, under such circumstances received an “iron” reason for this - the lack of necessary rituals on the part of the Verkhovna Rada Apparatus. And the latter is simply in no hurry.

The apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada is an auxiliary body of parliament, consisting of officials, staff and technical personnel. It carries out the functions of organizational, legal, informational, social, analytical, logistical and other support for the activities of the parliament, its structural divisions and deputies. Staff members do not make any decisions on behalf of parliament, but only ensure the development of draft decisions, their preparation and implementation.

In the end, even the head of the humanitarian committee from the mono-majority, Nikita Poturaev, ran out of patience. He initiated a public appeal to the Apparatus with a demand to explain why the text of the government bill for the second reading was not made public within a month. The committee voted unanimously for this request. Poturaev claims that the Main Legal Department has already provided some of its comments, on the basis of which the committee twice made technical and legal changes, then the bill was sent to the Apparatus - and after that everything froze

One of the initiators of the collection of signatures for consideration in the Rada in the first reading of the draft banning the activities of the UOC-MP, Yulia Klimenko from Golos, gives an example of a law on mobilization. It had twice as many amendments as the law on religious organizations, but the notorious table was formed between seven in the evening and seven in the morning. “That is, when there is political will, everything happens in a maximum of 2-12 hours,” notes Klimenko. “When there is no political will, but there is big money or lobbying, the Apparatus deals with bureaucracy. There are only two thousand edits in the project, 80% of which are just spam from OPZZH, so there were simply no good reasons to keep it in the Apparatus for so long.”

Elite "service"

The apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada, due to its specificity, is a structure “in itself,” which is why you rarely hear such detective stories with its participation. However, claims against this body emerge from time to time not only from the humanitarian committee and supporters of a speedy ban on the Moscow Church. Chairman of the Committee on Social Policy Galina Tretyakova also drew attention to the fact that the salaries of the Apparatus employees are several times higher than the salaries of the people's deputies themselves, although in terms of subordination it should be the other way around. Tretyakova was indignant that some members of the Parliamentary Apparatus saw their incomes increase by a million or more in the war year 2022 compared to peacetime years, and complained that “low-paid” people’s deputies have long been dependent on the favor of their higher-paid “servicemen.” For comparison: the Verkhovna Rada supply manager Vyacheslav Shtuchny received almost 3 million UAH in salary for 2022, while the same Tretyakova and the leaders of parliamentary factions received half a million each, and speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk received 718 thousand UAH.

After the uproar, the staff of the Apparatus decided to transfer their one-day salary to the needs of the Armed Forces.

By the way, Shtuchny came to this position back in September 2019 and still holds it with a break to work as the first deputy head of the State Security Department (July 2020 - November 2021). During his first “coming” to the Apparatus, Stuchny was remembered for his conflict with the then head of the Rada, Dmitry Razumkov - it was rumored that Bankova appointed the head of the Apparatus almost as an “overseer” of the ambitious speaker. The Chief of Staff has no problems with Ruslan Stefanchuk. Like the speaker, Stuchny, who rose to the rank of brigadier general, is the eyes and ears of the Office of the President in Parliament, and his department, as practice shows, can sometimes slow down those initiatives that the authorities still consider untimely.

Political scientist Vladimir Fesenko notes that the Apparatus itself hardly allowed itself such willfulness. “Sometimes there may be games in its depths, but the political position always dominates. If the president or the parliamentary majority insist, the Apparatus speeds up the process, says the political scientist. Now, perhaps for the first time in history, a situation has arisen where the heads of the Apparatus receive higher salaries than deputies. But still, apparatchiks are politically dependent people whom the leadership of the Verkhovna Rada can fire if something goes wrong. The specific issue of the UOC-MP may not be a priority for the authorities now, which is why the process is not being accelerated. And this is unlikely to be the initiative of the Apparatus itself - probably, here it is covered by people from other high offices who are guided by purely pragmatic political motives.”

And yet, in this story one should not underestimate one more factor: if there are more than enough adherents of the Moscow Church among the deputy corps, then obviously there are enough of them in all the stacks of “auxiliary structures” of the Verkhovna Rada.

Device Device Response

Sources of the “Commander-in-Chief” in the Verkhovna Rada Staff claim that open parliamentary accusations caused a great stir, and the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada had to intervene in the situation. Therefore, internal squabbles in raised voices that broke out were tamed quite quickly.

After receiving the deputy’s appeal, the Staff promptly – the next morning – posted its response on the Rada website. Only for some reason it was addressed not to parliamentarians who officially expressed their complaints against the Apparatus, but... to representatives of the media who disseminated this news. The response stated that the final version of the comparative table for bill No. 8371, volume of 917 pages, was provided by the committee to the General Legal Department only on May 1 at 16:30. Interlocutors of the “Commander in Chief” in the committee note that here the Apparatus was somewhat deceitful, because it referred exclusively to official correspondence recorded in SEDO (electronic document management system). While most of the correspondence with the same legal department was carried out outside the system.

This fact is indirectly confirmed by the fact that the apparatus allegedly promised to post the long-suffering table on the parliamentary website on Friday. Now it will be up to the leadership of the parliament and the mono-majority to come up with arguments why the high-profile project is not being brought to the floor. Just as they, for example, have been doing for more than a year with regard to the bill on depriving state awards and titles of traitors and collaborators. In fact, the explanation for these cat-and-mouse games lies on the surface: the government is very dependent on its former ardent critics, and now partners in parliament from the ex-OPPL. And the latter should not be offended either by exaggerating the theme of their beloved church, or by the prospects of losing the title of Hero of Ukraine to the unsinkable Yuriy Boyko.

However, that's another story.