The court's justices rubber-stamped President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to recruit individual lawmakers, as opposed to political parties, into a pro-presidential ruling majority.
The Ukrainian Constitutional Court on April 8 enhanced its reputation as a collection of judges who issue rulings that are tailor-made to please whoever is in political power.
In an 11-7 vote, the court’s 18 justices rubber-stamped President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to recruit individual lawmakers, as opposed to political parties, into a pro-presidential ruling majority.
The tortuous ruling directly contradicts the Constitution, which stipulates that the only permissible way to form a ruling legislative coalition is by recruiting entire political factions — since that is the way voters elect their representatives to parliament.
Voters don’t have the advantage of casting ballots for individuals – or even knowing all the candidates on a given party’s ballot.
The ruling also is diametrically opposed to the same court’s 2008 ruling on the matter – in which the high justices said that ruling coalition are formed only by political factions, not individuals.
“Don’t spend a lot of time analyzing the decision,” said Yevhen Zakharov, head of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. “It’s a power grab, pure and simple.”
The independence, honesty and competence of the Constitutional Court have been challenged for at least a decade. In 2004, the judges ruled that Kuchma was eligible to run for a third term, even though the Constitution stipulates that a president should be limited to two terms.
The court further sullied its reputation in 2007, when then-president Viktor Yushchenko fired four of the 18 justices to avoid the prospect of an adverse ruling on his right to disband parliament and call early elections.
This time, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who brought the case after losing her job and ruling majority, accused the judges of taking bribes.
Citing unnamed sources in the Constitutional Court, Tymoshenko said Yanukovych’s team offered judges $1 million to rule in their favor. “If there were a prosecutor general’s office in Ukraine, then a case should have been opened against those constitutional judges that committed a crime and knowingly issued an illegal decision,” Tymoshenko said on April 8, before meeting with Prosecutor General’s Oleksandr Medvedko.
However, deputy prosecutor general Viktor Kudryatsev, a member of the High Council of Justice, said Tymoshenko did not back up her claims with evidence.
“When we asked [Tymoshenko] to name the last name of the parliament deputy who met with constitutional court judges, she said, ‘Everybody knows who it is. Go out and ask people. As a leader of a political party, I am entitled to my own political view,’” Kudryavtsev told Kommersant newspaper on April 9.
The head of the Constitutional Court, however, defended the ruling.
“A Ukrainian lawmaker isn’t a serf, and he doesn’t express the will of his party but of the people,” Andriy Stryzhak said. “He takes an oath to the people, not a party.”
But lawyer, lawmaker and former presidential candidate Arseniy Yatseniuk punched holes in the logic.
“In its decision, the Constitutional Court has essentially done away with the concept of proportional elections,” Yatseniuk said. “After all, citizens don’t vote for specific candidates for parliament, but for political parties, blocs and their electoral programs.”
Constitutional expert and former parliament deputy Ihor Koliushko, head of the Kyiv-based Political and Legal Reform Center, said the decision doesn’t make sense to him legally. “A Constitutional Court ruling is always ‘sacred,’ but I can tell you that I do not understand the ruling at all,” Koliushko said.
Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Klyuyev welcomed the ruling a day before it was leaked to the press. He said in remarks posted on the Cabinet’s website that the decision legitimizes the coalition.
Although the Ukrainian judicial system is widely considered among the nation’s most corrupt institutions, the ruling is not expected to generate much criticism from the West. The current sentiment appears to be to give Yanukovych a honeymoon period in which to end five years of political chaos under the ruling tandem of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko.
Led by President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions faction, some 235 deputies from three parliamentary factions – the Regions, Communist Party and Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn’s bloc – created the “stability and reforms” coalition on March 11. But they needed to recruit at least a dozen individual lawmakers from other factions to put them over the top.
The president’s press service issued this statement: “[Yanukovych] will never violate the Constitution and will act in strict accordance with the law. He will also accept any decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine on the legitimacy of the newly formed coalition. That means if the Constitutional Court was to decide that the coalition is illegitimate, the president would be ready to announce the new parliamentary election.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Peter Byrne can be reached at [email protected].
