More transparency and accountability are long overdue for Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt judiciary -- perhaps the No. 1 problem holding back the nation's progress, in the opinion of President Petro Poroshenko and many others.
The new leadership has been very vocal about planned legal changes but yet nothing is in place and the first steps of the new parliament have shown that there is no consistent approach on it.
In a controversial move, parliament passed two alternative bills last week in the first reading, one to ensure a fair trial, drafted by Poroshenko’s council on judicial reform, and other on judges, authored by lawmakers and experts of the reanimation package of reforms, a civic initiative of nongovernmental organizations.
The bills contradict each other on many issues.
Commercial courts, which hear business disputes and have the reputation for being the most corrupt venues, remain in place in the presidential bill and are liquidated in the one prepared by lawmakers.
The presidential bill also leaves the right for the president and parliament to reassign judges, while the other one does not.
“It’s unacceptable to make judges dependent on political authorities, which are the president and parliament,” Igor Koliushko, head of of the Center for Political and Legal Reform and member of the reanimation package of reforms says. “(Former President Viktor) Yanukovych already showed how he was using it and now all are afraid that new leadership can repeat this practice.”
The bill of the lawmakers suggests giving the right to reassign judges to the Council of Judges which is supposed to do that based on the decision of qualification commission of judges responsible for recruitment.
Meanwhile, liquidation of commercial courts and restructuring of the court system will reduce public spending on judicial system, according to the authors of the bill.
The number of cases commercial courts have to consider is between 11 and 18 per month, the lowest among the courts of general jurisdiction, while the public spending per one hearing in the commercial court is the highest – Hr 3,889 ($240), according to the 2013 statistics of the state judicial administration of Ukraine, which the authors of the bill cite, as an example of unreasonable expenditure.
For comparison, administrative courts have from 21 to 176 cases per month, while the public spending on that varies from Hr 266 to Hr 1298 ($16.6 – $81) per month, depending on the level of the court.
Alexey Kot, member of the presidential council on judicial reform and managing partner of Antika law firm, calls the initiative to liquidate commercial courts emotional.
“The practice shows that effective justice can be guaranteed only with the system of specialized courts,” he says. The presidential bill was prepared by leading experts including representatives of the Justice Ministry, Constitutional and High Courts of Ukraine and therefore involves a lot of recommendations on practical improvement of legislation, according to him. “It has become a compromise result of the first stage of judicial reform,” he says.
Kot also says that the assessment of their bill by reanimation package of reforms is “not exactly correct.”
“Theoretically the president can reassign all judges who are loyal to him to the Pechersk court, for example, but I doubt that, especially if we are talking about reassignment to higher courts,” he says.
There is a norm in the bill, which introduces the procedure of competitive selection of judges which implies that special qualification commission of judges will be responsible for that while president only approves their decision, according to him.
In the current situation, Koliushko, hopes for compromise and hopes that parliament’s justice committee will develop a new version of the bill in the coming weeks.
Vitaliy Bala, director of the Situations Modeling Agency, says that all discussions that will arise over the key reforms in the country “are for the good.”
“This is what can result in the decision that will satisfy not only somebody’s political ambitions, but also demands of the society,” he says.
Bala, however, points out that the discussion of the judicial reform should have involved more representatives of nongovernmental organizations. “The judges shouldn’t take part in reforming of judiciary. It’s important to engage people who are competent but at the same time unbiased,” Bala said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Anastasia Forina can be reached at [email protected]
