A week for mobilisation: what will MPs change in the scandalous draft law before the second reading?
16 February 12:23
MPs have one week left to finalise the government’s draft law No. 10449 on strengthening mobilisation for the second reading. Although the relevant committee was expecting more than a thousand amendments, as of 11 February, there were about 350.
The draft law overcame a difficult path to the parliamentary session hall. on 19 December, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that the General Staff had requested the mobilisation of an additional half a million Ukrainians. The then Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, confirmed that the army needed to be replenished. However, he refused to talk about the mechanisms of recruitment – it was not the army’s business. On 25 December, the government submitted a bill to the Rada to improve the mobilisation procedure. The Verkhovna Rada Committee on Anti-Corruption Policy acknowledged the existence of corruption risks in the government’s draft law. The document was returned to the government for revision. At the end of January, the Cabinet of Ministers again submitted an updated draft law on mobilisation to the Rada. on 7 February, the Rada decided to support the document in the first reading.
MP Fedir Venislavskyi, who is a member of the Committee on Defence, National Security and Intelligence, expects the largest number of comments to be made on the articles regulating rotation and dismissal from the Armed Forces. He said this According to Venislavskyi, one of the important areas of reform of the mobilisation mechanism should be the maximum digitalisation of document flow.
“However, there will most likely be no electronic summonses,”
– said the MP.
He sees his task as excluding from the draft law unconstitutional mechanisms such as the seizure of accounts of those who evade mobilisation.
Among the proposed innovations is an electronic cabinet for persons liable for military service. It should help the state to move from running around with calls to remotely informing people about the need to come to the territorial recruitment and social support centre (TSC), which is still called military commissariats out of post-Soviet habit. In Russia, electronic summonses are sent out through an app that almost everyone has. And criminal liability for failure to appear arises from the moment the summons is sent, regardless of whether the addressee reads it or not.
“We cannot do without elements of coercion in this case, but we cannot allow the seizure of accounts, property or deprivation of driving licences,”
– said Venislavsky, who is a professional constitutional lawyer.
During the discussion stage, Dmytro Lubinets, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, emphasised the presence of provisions in the draft law that contradict the Constitution.
Earlier, MP Anastasia Radina highlighted three main points of the draft law that need to be improved: the procedure for demobilising those who fought; deferral of conscription for those who care for a disabled person; and liability for failure to register a person liable for military service in an electronic cabinet and failure to appear at the military registration and enlistment office when called upon. The draft law defines only the period of service after which one can submit a report on demobilisation – 36 months. But the law does not specify when the commander must satisfy it. This leaves room for abuse. Lawmakers will also have to define a list of documents for those who care for disabled relatives. After all, there are many cases when a son of military age takes his disabled parents out, and then they return home alone. The system of coercion against evaders is also important. The first version of the draft law was full of proposals for reprisals, including seizure of accounts and deprivation of the right to drive.
Since the document appeared shortly after the President’s statement about the need to replenish the army by half a million people, one might think that the document is intended to replenish the Armed Forces.
“This is not the case. We still have mobilisation mechanisms today. The draft law proposes to streamline them, to establish equal and fair treatment of all those who can hold arms and defend the country,”
– said in a commentary viktor Yahun, former deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, said in a commentary.
Ukrainian MPs promise to clean up the draft law from unjustified repressive tools. General Yahun is convinced that the law will work if the legislator is focused on cooperation with the mobilised, rather than coercion.
“The state must take into account the wishes of its defenders, it must give them a choice. The first such experience is the recruitment centre in Lviv. It is worth spreading,”
– he said.
However, many issues related to mobilisation remain outside the draft law. In particular, the so-called electronic certificate of a person liable for military service, which is necessary for the state to know about the available human resources for warfare. This is what said Yehor Chernev, deputy chairman of the relevant committee. Currently, the Ministry of Defence operates only with approximate figures, relying on its own, often outdated data, as well as more accurate tax accounting information. According to Mr Chernev, the adoption of the law will not solve the problems associated with abuse by representatives of the TCC on the streets: checks for military registration documents are a normal occurrence during martial law.
“In case of illegal actions of TCC employees, other laws should apply,”
– mr Chernev believes. The new law will not regulate the work of military medical commissions either – violations and abuses in their work, according to MP Chernev, should be dealt with by law enforcement and the courts.
Mariana Bezugla, the deputy head of the relevant committee, who is known for her media activity, refused to comment on the progress of the document and the most controversial issues. A member of the committee’s staff said in an off-the-record conversation that the lawyers working on the draft law call the document “very raw”, and a week before the second reading, no one in the committee has a clear idea what form it will take in the session hall.
Author: Anvar Derkach.