Pro-presidential lawmakers this week successfully stalled the start of prosecutorial reforms that, when adopted last autumn, President Petro Poroshenko hailed as key to tearing down the "last Soviet remnant in Ukraine's law enforcement system."
The governing coalition in parliament on April 21 supported a proposal by Yuriy Lutsenko, the former interior minister and a leader in the pro-presidential camp, to delay to July 15 the start of the law aimed at boosting the independence of the prosecutor’s office.
The law would also curtail the broad and arbitrary powers of prosecutors, long abused by those in political power.
Voting records show that 108 lawmakers from Poroshenko’s bloc were crucial to securing a majority 249 votes by supporting the controversial delay, though 10 abstained and 28 were absent.
The postponement was justified with the rationale that prosecutors weren’t ready to make the changes, in particular those that would decentralize the staffing of prosecutors and disciplinary powers.
But critics such as Batkivshchyna lawmaker Serhiy Vlasenko now fear efforts will be made to water down the legislation in order to preserve some of the president’s grip over the powerful law enforcement body.
Vlasenko said delay could also give lawmakers time to curb the formation and independence of a special corruption-fighting branch within the prosecutor’s office. Some of those changes weren’t adopted on April 21 in two bills that Lutsenko had also drafted.
The stonewalling and foot-dragging are a sharp contrast to the lofty rhetoric that accompanied the reforms.When Poroshenko signed the bill on Oct. 23 into law, he proclaimed that a pillar of Soviet authoritarian rule had been removed.
“We have liquidated the last Soviet remnant in Ukraine’s law enforcement system,” the president said then.The measures, which were developed in cooperation with rule of law specialists from the Council of Europe, envisioned notably removing the power of “general supervision.”
Prosecutors would use their authority to effectively inspect the activities of any person, company or state body without showing probable cause for the probe. This extraordinary power had been criticized by the Venice Commission, the European Union body that specializes in constitutional law, as remnant of oppressive Soviet mechanisms used to suppress dissent and “enemies of the state.
By stalling the prosecutorial reforms, Ukraine’s pro-western leadership risks being criticized as plotting to preserve the very arbitrary power that were abused former President Viktor Yanukovych before he was toppled by last year’s EuroMaidan Revolution.
“Implementation of the law is a first crucial step towards a more independent and fair system of justice in Ukraine,” said Oleksandr Banchuk, who rallied with several dozen demonstrators outside parliament on April 21 urging lawmakers not to put off or muddle the prosecutorial reforms.
“We will never get Yanukovych and his people from the former regime brought to justice without reforms at the prosecutor’s office,” added Banchuk, an expert on criminal justice at the Centre for Political and Legal Reforms, a Kyiv-based think tank.
Editor’s note: This article was updated to change the date of when the law on prosecutors comes into effect.
