On 21 December 2013, Ivan Sikora, Director of the Open Society Foundation, made a speech addressed at fulfillment of anticorruption policy and prevention of conflict of interest at a plenary meeting of the “Political Analyst Club”, that operates within the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
According to Ivan Sikora, the high level of corruption in Ukraine and its systemic nature is the charge for uncompleted modernization and deceleration of public policy liberalization, along with selective rule of law and ignoring corruption risks. During his one-hour speech, Ivan Sikora presented contemporary Ukrainian methodological developments in the field of anticorruption policy and prevention of conflict of interest in the public service. A special focus was made on the current anticorruption policy issues at the national, regional and local levels. During the presentation, the needs of beneficiaries of the anticorruption policy were considered, as well as main issues related to declarative and simulation style of the government anticorruption policy.
In the speech a separate focus was made on the problem of conflict of interest in the public service as well as on different methodological approaches to analyzing this phenomenon in the environment of public society institutions. In particular, alternative approaches to monitoring integrity in the public service. As a reminder, in summer of 2013, the corresponding methodological discussion was initiated by the Open Society Foundation http://www.osf.org.ua/about_us/org_news/anticor_2013/.
The issues related to identification and prevention of a conflict of interest where analyzed in specific cases of members of the government of Ukraine, members of the Parliament of Ukraine, and local deputies activity. A separate focus was made on a trend to smooth political party differences of MPs when lobbying draft laws that have explicit signs of conflict of interest and gaining benefits by lobbyists. Such legislative initiatives frequently directly contradict to pre-election promises. For example, draft law N3377 “On amending the Budget Code of Ukraine (regarding write-offs of a target loan)” http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/zweb2/webproc4_1?pf3511=48592 and draft law N3376 “On write-offs of a target loan, provided to the Enterprise of Union of Citizens “Kerch educational-production enterprise of Ukrainian society for the Blind “Krym-Pack”). http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/zweb2/webproc4_1?pf3511=48591, submitted by Valeriy Sushkevych (“Batkivshchyna” faction), Valentyna Liutikova (Party of Regions’ faction) and Yaroslav Suhyi (Party of Regions’ faction).
The subject of lobbying of these draft laws is write-offs of a UAH 5.6 mln debt of the “Krym-Pack” enterprise. The funds were provided by the Social Protection of Disabled Fund to execute in full the state social obligations to disabled persons that work at the enterprise. The conflict of interest is in gaining benefits by a couple of Liutikovs (the director of the “Krym-Pack” enterprise is Volodymyr Liutikov, the husband of the co-author of the draft law, Valentyna Liutikov). This draft law also creates a situation when the government should pay for errors that led to multi-million losses made by Volodymyr Liutikov, director of the enterprise “Krym-Pack”, without any sanctions applied to the Director of the enterprise. Moreover, that legislative initiative contradicts provisions of the Budget Code, which directly prohibit write-offs of debt of enterprises to the government on credits and loans, except the cases of bankruptcy and corresponding court decisions not in favor of the government.
As an example of a local level conflict of interest, a conflict of interest related to the activity of Oleksandr Sokolov, the City Mayor of Chernihiv, was analyzed. A number of other examples of ignoring corruption risks and conflict of interest when different levels of government make decisions were focused on. The problem of identification of the end beneficiary of corruption schemes on the example of purchase of “Boyko Towers” was also considered. The author of the report stated the vision of the role of civil society in changing the anticorruption policy agenda for Ukraine.
A discussion of the report by the participants of the “Political Analyst Club” meeting confirmed the importance of applying interdisciplinary approaches to researching the phenomenon of corruption as well as carrying on setting of indicators of efficiency and efficacy of the anticorruption policy and its inclusion to evaluation of policy products, the need for more detailed description of specificity of corruption practices on the level of national and local budgets, and the ways to prevent them.
In the methodological context, the analysis of anticorruption policy requires a special attention. Such policy, traditionally, is considered as an institutional policy, that is called to compensate integrity deficiency in public servants’ behavior and prevent abusing power by sector economy politicians. Therefore, the problematic questions of anticorruption policy are focused on the issues of legislative regulation of public service, and the experts in the field of administrative law are basically invited to generate instruments of successful anticorruption policy. According to the participants of the Club, Denis Chernikov and Serhiy Pancyr, the success of anticuruption policy depends on the efficacy of the analysis and implementation of sector and substantive policies, that execute control and regulation of markets and sectors of economy. Roman Kobec made a speech on the vision of the further methodological development of the analysis of anticorruption policy.
Efforts of politicians, officials and entrepreneurs, that are united in informal and social networks, to use public resources and authority for influence on the market generate corruption risks. Thus, researches should also focus on business, as a field of formation of corruption risks in conditions of lack of free competition. The problem of maintaining the network of experts in institutional and sectoral policies for successful analysis of anticorruption policy is also obvious.
The video recording by Ivan Sikora’s report and the following discussion will shortly be placed on a specialized site “Analysis of Policy in Ukraine” (www.policy-analysis.org.ua) that will be created by support of the International Renaissance Foundation.
Reference:
The club of policy analysts was established in September 2013. It brings together instructors, scientists and practitioners in the government policy analysis. The goal of the Club is to discuss best methodological practices of Ukrainian and foreign analysts in the field of policy analysis. The members of the Club are Serhiy Pancyr (Kyiv-Mohyla Academy), Roman Kobetc (Institute of Philosophy), Eduard Rakhimkulov (Parliamentary Development Program of Ukraine), Valeriy Tertychka (Academy of State Management), Ihor Shevlyakov (Ukrainian Institute for Public Policy), Denis Chernikov (independent expert on fiscal and economic policy) and other well-known researchers in the field of policy analysis.
