The Communist Party has called for a boycott of the referendum saying that it would strip the country's parliament of its independence. Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko, a long time foe who lost to Mr Kuchma in the November election, accuses the government of bowing to the dictates of the International Monetary fund. Even some members of the majority - including the majority coordinator, former President Leonid Kravchuk, parliamentary speaker Ivan Plyushch and deputy speaker Viktor Medvedchuk have expressed opposition to the referendum as a whole or to specific questions. The country's blighted economy is the real backdrop to what has been a long-running feud between President Kuchma and parliament since he was elected in 1994. The economy has been in crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union and sporadic reforms have failed to halt the decline.
Poverty is now widespread and workers frequently go unpaid for months.
The referendum is intended to end the conflict between the executive and the legislature which has blocked economic progress. There have also been widespread allegations of corruption among parliamentary deputies. Russian President Boris Yeltsin used a referendum in 1993 to increase his constitutional powers over a leftist-dominated parliament and Belarussian leader Aleksander Lukashenko used one to dissolve the Assembly in 1996. The Council of Europe, the continent's leading human rights body, has condemned the referendum as unconstitutional and called for it to be postponed. It criticised the transparency of the collection of signatures which approved the calling of the referendum.