The platform of a party is its program. The Libertarian Party of the U.S. and the Libertarian Party of the United Kingdom have their platforms, but reusing them in our case is not feasible as they address mostly the issues that are specific to the respective countries. The platform of the Libertarian Party of Ukraine is based on the following:
The Fundamentals
- Freedom is our key value
- Individuals come before groups, private comes before public
- The citizens take the first place, the state comes after, it is founded by the citizens for securing their rights and serving their interests
- The citizens owe nothing to the state except for paying taxes, the state owes everything to the citizens
- The government should be as small as possible, it should not take any functions that could be efficiently implemented by the private sector
The Political Program
- Adoption of the new Constitution, which means a new social contract shall be made based on the ideas of the Libertarian Papers
- Conducting a full-scale lustration
- Making the members of parliament responsible for adhering to their electoral program up to terminating their mandate in case of systematic failure to adhere
- Laying out the exclusive list of matters on which the parliament can make laws, invalidating all the laws that regulate anything beyond those matters
- Using the proportional representation for parliamentary elections
- The office of the President shall be abolished
- Limiting the power of the executive branch to adopt regulations
- Giving the executive branch more autonomy for setting up its structure and distributing powers inside its bodies
- Giving more powers to the local governments as well as distributing a certain share of the tax revenues to them
The Economic Program
- Tax reform: only the sales tax (instead of the VAT), the personal income tax, the corporate income tax, the excise tax, the customs duty, and the social security tax shall be retained
- Shifting from the VAT, which is cumbersome in managing and much more prone to manipulations, to the sales tax at the rate of 3-4%
- A flat personal income tax rate that is applied to any source of income
- Fines for incorrect tax paying shall be abolished, paying the correct amount plus the interest on the amount underpaid shall be used instead
- Free trade agreements will be used whenever possible, ideally all trade shall be free of customs duties
- Free movement of capital, abolishing the currency controls and the currency regulations, as well as all other limitations of investing into Ukraine or from Ukraine
- Shifting from the government regulation, standardization, certification, and control to the market-based self-regulation whenever possible
- The only permitted case for the government intervention to the economy is enforcing the fair and free competition, prosecuting the violations, fraud, and the abusive use of the monopoly status
- Abolishing the labor legislation, labor shall be regulated only by individual contracts between the employee and the employer
The Social Program
- The government is neither a nurse nor a charity, the social assistance should be a matter of charities and volunteers, but not the government officials
- Abolishing of all the government-sponsored benefits and privileges, in exceptional cases only the targeted social assistance (allowance, grant, scholarship) to specific persons is possible
- Gradual shift over 40 years from the pass-through pension plan to the 100% retirement savings based plans with the reduction of the respective social security tax component to 0%
- Populating the assets base of the state-owned pension plan to offset the existing liabilities for future pension benefits accrued to the current participants using the proceeds from the privatization of the state-owned enterprises; for future contributions the state-owned pension plan shall be replaced with the private pension funds
- Shifting from the public social insurance to insuring the respective risks with by the private companies along with the reduction of the respective social security tax component to 0%
- Gradual transformation of the leading state-owned education, healthcare, cultural, and sports entities into non-profit non-governmental organizations (the third sector), and transfer of all the remaining entities to the local governments
- Abolishing the state-sponsored places in the education system
- Abolishing the government-issued diplomas and the government accreditation of the educational institutions
- Shifting to the 100% voluntary medical insurance or pay-as-you-go services
- Grant-based funding of science, culture, sports; the allocation of the grants shall be made on competitive basis and the decisions shall be made under the civil activists supervision
- Abolishing the ministries of education and science, healthcare, culture and sports
The Law Enforcement and the Armed Forces Reform Program
- The actual independence of the judicial branch by eliminating the dependence on the legislative or the executive for the appointment or dismissal of judges
- The trial in all cases where the jail sentence may be made shall be performed only by the jury based on the Anglo-American model
- The private investigation and private prosecution shall be allowed for all cases
- The public prosecution shall be reformed into an organization for civil control over the government
- Establishing the municipal police that shall be responsible for the public order, reports and financed by the local governments
- Establishing the criminal police that shall be responsible for criminal investigations, be a demilitarized body structured like the FBI
- Total ban on any involuntary military service, shifting to the 100% contractual military service
- Shifting to the NATO standards for the organization and support of the armed forces
- Compulsory attending the military academies in the NATO countries for high-ranked army officers
- The NATO membership is a strategic objective
The Foreign Affairs Program
- Cooperating with the EU for the free trade, free movement of people, freedom of employment, but refusing the full EU membership, since the EU is too bureaucratic and too socialist-skewed organization
- The NATO membership is a top strategic priority
- The territorial integrity of Ukraine shall be fully restored (Crimea, Eastern Ukraine) without any preconditions, any territorial concessions are possible only after the positive voting of all the Ukrainians
- The priorities in foreign relations are the U.S., Canada, the U.K., the Baltic countries, Poland, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Australia
The Public Sector Reform Program
- The change of the paradigm – from the state service / serving the state to the civil service / serving the citizens
- Adoption of the code of ethics that is structured like the code of ethics of the CFA Institute
- Unconditional ratification of the U.N. Convention against Corruption, including the illicit enrichment articles, and its full adoption to the civil servants
- Reduction in the scope of the government functions leads to the reduction in the number of civil servants
- Limiting the maximal tenure in the civil service by 20 years
- Making civil service result-oriented and not process-oriented
- Assessing the civil service performance by the citizens’ satisfaction with the qualify of its work
- The western education and fluency in English as a prerequisite for the appointment to top-level positions in the civil service, intermediate English skills as a prerequisite for the appointment to any managerial positions