Ukraine’s next presidential race isn’t slated until 2015, but the president and his ruling Party of Regions are already gearing up for it.
The most recent chess moves taken,
opposition party members and experts say, were appointments to two key
positions in the Constitutional Court and Central Elections Commission (CEC),
filled by close allies to President Viktor Yanukovych earlier this month.
Viacheslav Ovcharenko, reportedly a
longtime ally of the president, was picked by peers behind closed doors on July
18 to head the Constitutional Court. The 56-year-old is a native of Yenakievo in
Donetsk Oblast, Yanukovych’s hometown. In the 1980s Ovcharenko worked as a
lawyer at Ordzonikidze Coal Company when Yanukovych headed the company’s
vehicle department.
Serhiy Leshchenko, the deputy chief editor at Ukrainska Pravda news
website, says Ovcharenko could be behind the mysterious disappearance of the
president’s criminal records. Yanukovyvh was convicted twice, in 1967 and 1970,
for robbery and assault, respectively, and spent more than three years in
prison. In 2001, Ovcharenko became head of the Yenakievo Municial Court.
Records of Yanukovych’s convictions went missing from the court’s archive that
year.
When questioned about this Ovcharenko blamed the records’ disappearance
on poor security. He has never spoken to the press and was unavailable for
comment. Yanukovych also never commented on his convictions, but his
then-advisor Anna German said in 2004 that both were annulled because “he
never committed the crimes he was convicted of.”
In 2006, during Yanukovych’s second stint
as prime minister, Ovcharenko moved to Kyiv to become a Constitutional Court
judge. The top court consists of 18 judges: six are appointed by the president,
six by the parliament and six are selected by the Council of Judges of Ukraine,
controlled by the president. Ovcharenko was appointed by a parliament dominated
by the Party of Regions.
Opposition party members warn the head of
the Constitutional Court is no longer seen as an independent figure, but as a
presidential puppet.
“In past years the Constitutional Court
has completely discredited itself. It is just a division of the presidential administration
and is ruled by the president,” says Pavlo Petrenko, a lawmaker from the
opposition Batkivshchyna party.
On May 30 the constitutional court ruled
that Kyiv mayoral and city council elections would be held in 2015, even though
the city mayor resigned in 2011 and the council’s term ended in early June this
year. If Ovcharenko keeps his position until 2015, he will be the person to
swear in the winner of the president elections.
Shortly before Ovcharenko was picked for
his new position, another Yanukovych loyalist was elected head of the CEC, a
key body tasked with overseeing elections. On July 6, with 11 out of 14 commission
members voting in favor, Mykhailo Okhendovsky was given the position of
elections commissioner.
The vote was held after the president
asked parliament to remove previous CEC head Volodymyr Shapoval because he had
reached the retirement age of 65. Some 241 members of parliament supported the
decision. Meanwhile, the opposition blocked the session hall in an attempt to
stall the vote. The decision, opposition members said, was a key step toward ensuring
Yanukovych’s control over the CEC ahead of 2015.
The CEC consists of 15 members,
representing different factions of parliament. Okhendovsky joined the
commission in 2004, and was reappointed in 2007 from the ruling Party of
Region’s quota. In 2004 he was one of the CEC members who declared Yanukovych
the victor of the presidential race over, despite massive evidence of election
fraud. However, the result of the elections was later cancelled by the Supreme
Court following the Orange Revolution, which brought Viktor Yushchenko to power.
Experts say these two appointees are in
line with all appointments since 2010, the year Yanukovych came to power.
“Appointing people from the Donetsk region
who are personally loyal to the president has been the policy (of Yanukovych’s
administration),” says Yuriy Yakymenko, head of political programs at Razumkov Center,
a Kyiv-based think tank. “Although the CEC will rotate in
2014, it is clear that the ruling party and the president is trying to
consolidate as much power as possible ahead of the elections.”
Ovcharenko and Okhendovskyi are
professionals, Yakymenko added, but they are “definitely not neutral figures
whose judgment might be impartial.”
Kyiv Post staff
writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected].
