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UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT KUCHMA SURE CONSTITUTION WILL BE AMENDED BEFORE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
  

Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, Ukraine, in Russian, 14 Apr 04
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, UK, Apr 14, 2004

KIEV - Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma believes that constitutional reform [aimed at transferring some powers from the president to parliament and enhancing the role of the prime minister] will be implemented in the country before the forthcoming presidential election [scheduled for 31 October].

"I am sure that constitutional reform will certainly take place before the presidential election," Kuchma said, speaking in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine today.

Commenting, at the agency's request, on the situation around the implementation of political reform, the president singled out a few reasons for the failure to garner the necessary number of votes in parliament to pass constitutional amendments [on 8 April]."When I carefully looked at the results of the vote, I was convinced once again that parties should work in politics and not the amorphous associations of MPs, even if they are called factions. The real party factions demonstrated consistency and responsibility," Kuchma said.

While 300 votes were necessary to pass the political reform bill, 294 deputies voted in its favour on 8 April.

"The opponents of reform, their behaviour and their arguments shows us again that when Ukraine's democratic future is on one scale and the phantom of power is on the other, they very cynically choose the phantom of power, acting according to the principle `win or lose', while absolutely ignoring the fact that not only they, but the entire Ukrainian state may lose," the president said. At the same time, he expressed the hope that "those people will come to their senses and see things clearly".

"Perhaps I haven't done everything possible, but I remain an ardent supporter of reform. Ukraine and only Ukraine needs it. One cannot further continue the permanent confrontation between the branches of power. You know well how much this impeded work of the entire system of government over the past several years. Reform is the requirement of the times.

There is an urgent need to secure stable economic development and Ukraine's formation as a democratic legal state with a clearly defined [system of] separation of powers and with a system of checks and balances," Kuchma stressed. [Please send queries to  bcm@mon.bbc.co.uk]

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