The new parliament due to be elected next spring could be promptly dismissed if the nation’s highest court decides Ukraine’s new election law is unconstitutional.
Should the Constitutional Court be asked to rule on the law, which was passed and amended by parliament but has yet to be signed by the president, the judges will not rush any decision to accommodate the upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for March, according to the court’s chief justice.
“If we need to take time until March or May, until we are ready, we will do it. We are not going to make a hasty decision just to make it before the election,” said Constitutional Court Chairman Ivan Tymchenko at a press conference on Oct. 16.
A group of some 80 parliament deputies has threatened to petition the court to invalidate the law, which would reserve half of the seats in the next parliament for deputies elected by proportional representation from party lists, and the other half for candidates chosen in local first-past-the-post races.
The group of mostly unaffiliated deputies is charging that the law violates the constitution by discriminating against candidates who are not members of political parties, and thus ineligible for half of the seats in parliament.
Once the president signs the law into effect, they may officially appeal to the Constitutional Court.
Deputy Vladislav Nosov, the group’s leader, said last week that the deputies are prepared to act as soon as the law is signed by President Leonid Kuchma. Kuchma officially has until Oct. 29 to sign the law but was expected to do so this week.
Chief Justice Tymchenko would not comment on the consequences of a ruling against the election law after the elections have been held, but said the situation would be “very difficult.”
Political experts said it could mean the dismissal of the newly-elected parliament.
“This is a very possible scenario,” said Natalia Melnyczuk, manager of the United States Agency for International Development’s parliamentary development project.
Less likely is the possibility that all power would be transferred to the executive branch, though Kuchma would doubtless welcome that scenario, experts said. “This situation would be very advantageous for the president and his office, because it gives him and the government freedom to act,” said Serhiy Odarych, director of the Ukrainska Perspektyva think tank. “The president might even turn around and implement some radical reform … which would improve his chances at the [presidential] election in 1999,” added Melnyczuk.
Odarych said the most likely result of a court ruling striking down the new law would be an extension of the old parliament’s term, however. “The old parliament only gets dismissed when the new one starts working,” said Odarych.
During its first year of existence, the Constitutional Court ruled on only four cases, turning down 44 other applications.
