If elected as president, Yulia Tymoshenko’s task will be to pass a referendum law, a new Constitution switching to the parliamentary system, a new law on entirely ticket-based elections, and possibly a new Tax Code, before the parliamentary elections due in late October.
“The new president will have a ‘window’ of opportunities between inauguration and parliamentary elections. The cosmetics, the make-up, the tuning of the old system won’t work,” Tymoshenko said at a meeting with the European Business Association in Kyiv on Feb. 4, adding that a referendum bill will first on her to-do list.
“I will consider it a huge achievement if we adopt a referendum law, a new constitution and possibly a new Tax Code within a half year’s time… If we don’t, we will ram them through,” Tymoshenko said.
She criticized the current judiciary reform. The court system is still in the “pocket” of the ruling political elite with no outside control, she said. To solve this problem, she proposes to create a system of disciplinary courts.
As for the Tax code project, the taxation system should be kept in its simpler form but should be made less exposed to abuse by cutting the rate of tax dodgers from the current 47 percent.
She also criticized the situation in agriculture where “up to ten families in this country hold 70 percent of agricultural land” and five or six entities have formed land banks of between 400,000 and 800,000-1,000,000 hectares.
Tymoshenko’s team favors a farm development strategy and likes the French model where land ownership is restricted and the right to buy land is only given nine years after cultivating it and with a limited right to pass it on by inheritance.
As president Tymoshenko would offer the post of Foreign Minister to Hryhoriy Nemyria, head of the parliamentary committee for human rights, who served as deputy prime minister in her government in 2007-2010.
Speaking of other appointments, Tymoshenko said that in her team, the financial and economic policy is now being handled by a whole team of persons coordinated by Vitaliy Lomakovych, the founder of the Optima think tank and a member of the Council of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) from 2014-2015.
