With only nine days until the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Ukraine’s political opposition is willing to meet almost any of the ruling Party of Regions’ conditions for freeing imprisoned ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to receive medical treatment in Germany.
European
Union leaders say that, before signing an association and free trade agreement,
Ukraine needs to find a way to release Tymoshenko, who was imprisoned in 2011
for seven years for abuse of office in a natural gas case seen by the West as a
political vendetta.
Tymoshenko,
who suffers severe back pain, is confined to a Kharkiv-based hospital under
surveillance from the doctors of Berlin-based Charite clinic.
Only a
month ago, the political opposition said they would not accept a “medical
vacation” for Tymoshenko, a deal that would require her to be returned to
Ukraine after medical treatment to finish serving her prison sentence. But on
Nov. 18, after several hours of debate, the opposition accepted such a
compromise and other proposals put forward by the pro-presidential Party of
Regions.
“This was a
real test of character,” said Iryna Herashchenko, an opposition parliament
member from Vitali Klitschko’s Ukrainian Democratic Allaince for Reforms.
Herashchenko is a member of a committee trying to negotiate a solution for
Tymoshenko’s release. She said the opposition was prepared to do just about
anything to achieve this goal, including agreeing to not count her time abroad
for medical treatment as part of her prison sentence.
“The most
important is to pass the law and not to break the summit,” Herashchenko wrote
on her Facebook account.
Tymoshenko
has said that she would accept any law that European mediators Pat Cox and
Aleksandr Kwasniewski find acceptable.
On Nov. 19,
the working group also agreed to set a maximum one-year term for foreign
medical treatment of a convicted person, renewable by court order for another
year. Previously, the opposition disagreed with those terms.
Hennady
Moskal of Tymoshenko’ Batkivshchyna
party told the Kyiv Post that the working group is making progress. The
opposition still insists that Tymoshenko should not pay a fine to the
government before she is set free.
Moskal said
that, even if parliament passes this bill, Tymoshenko will not be able to leave
the country before the Vilnius summit on Nov. 28-29 because of the legal
procedures required for that to happen.
“The court
will not have time for this,” Moskal said. “As long as colony submits paper to
the court, as long as the court sets a date of preliminary hearing, than it
will be hearing on the case with calls of various experts including the representatives
of Charite clinic. It’s impossible to finish this all by the summit.”
Andriy
Kozhemyakin, another member of
Tymoshenko’s bloc in the working group, said it’s possible to finalize the
draft before Nov. 21, when the parliament is set to vote on it. “The only thing
needed is political will of Party of Regions.” Kozhemyakin said.
But
Volodymyr Oliynyk, a member of working group from pro-Presidential Party of
Regions, is skeptical. “If every day we will be getting new proposals from
opposition how to improve (this law), it will never happen,” he said.
Volodymyr
Yefremov, head of the Party of Regions faction, said there is a 50/50 chance
that the parliament will pass the laws required for signing the political
association and free trade agreement with the EU.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be
reached at [email protected]
