Igor Guzhva, the former chief editor of the newspaper Vesti, who is under investigation in a Hr 17.8 million tax evasion case, is to stand in Kyiv’s local elections in Kyiv representing the Opposition Bloc.
Guzhva announced
this right after the latest court hearings on his case on Sept.28. He said he
was entering politics to fight media censorship and pressure from the
government. He said he would run for a seat on Kyiv City Council.
“The
pro-government parties have to lose this battle. The
more votes the opposition gets, the more chance that the situation in country
will change for the better,” Guzhva said.
“The local elections could be the
harbinger of great changes in Ukraine at the national level,” he said.
Guzhva said the Opposition Bloc
first proposed that he stand for election last year, during the Oct. 26 parliamentary
elections.
“They offered me a place in the
first ten of their election list, but I refused then because at that time I saw
my future in journalism. But now I’ve changed my mind and realized that the
only way to fight against the politicians is in their own field,” he said.
Guzhva has already joined the
Opposition Bloc, according to Volodymyr Pusanov, a member of the bloc.
But even if elected, Guzhva won’t
have the immunity from prosecution granted to members of parliament, according
to Volodymyr Fesenko, the director of Penta Center of Political Research.
Fesenko said Guzhva has every right
to stand for election, even though he is a suspect in a criminal case. “Only a guilty
verdict could prevent a person from becoming a lawmaker,” he said.
“But if the court found Guzhva
guilty after he became a Kyiv City Council member, he would be arrested and put
in jail, because local lawmakers have no immunity,” Fesenko told the Kyiv Post.
Local elections in Ukraine are to be
held on Oct. 25. Guzhva is standing as a candidate in an electoral constituency
in the Holosyivsky district of Kyiv.
Guzhva
quit as chief editor of Vesti on June 29, and says he has sold his share in the
Vesti mass media holding. The newspaper Vesti has been criticized for parroting
Kremlin propaganda and publishing so-called scoops that tarnish the image of
the Ukrainian Army, based mostly on information from anonymous sources.
Meanwhile,
at its latest hearings of Guzhva’s case, Shevchenko District Court in Kyiv
extended the travel ban on the former journalist.
“I’m sick of
this whole circus, and tired of asking for investigators’ approval every time I
need to visit my parents in Sloviansk,” Guzhva told the Kyiv Post.
“The case
against me is trumped up. They (the authorities) just want me to stay under
control. This is nonsense! Something has to be done about it,” Guzhva said.
He claimed
the State Fiscal Service fabricated the case against him in order to put
pressure on him and on the Vesti newspaper. “We (Vesti) were the first, and
then came the turn of (Savik) Shuster, who can now only broadcast from his
Internet channel,” said Guzhva.
Ukraine’s top political talk show, Shuster Live, was pulled
from the air on Ukraine’s leading Channel 1+1 on Sept. 18 right before the
program was supposed to start. Critics of the move have said the cancellation
of the show is a worrying sign of reduced media freedoms in Ukraine.
Kyiv Post writer Veronika Melkozerova can be
reached at [email protected]
