Ukrainian Parliament Speaker Volodymyr Rybak has announced that President Viktor Yanukovych has asked the Party of Regions faction to actively contribute to a debate on bills concerning the future of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
“The president reaffirmed his readiness to sign such a bill [allowing Tymoshenko to receive medical treatment abroad]. He also said that he called on the Party of Regions faction in parliament to actively participate in a debate on such bills and work together with other factions to secure the adoption of these bills by consensus,” Rybak said at a meeting with European Union member countries’ ambassadors accredited in Ukraine in Kyiv on Friday.
The Ukrainian president believes that if this bill is passed, it might “also help sort out the situation surrounding the so-called case of Ukraine’s ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko,” he said.
Two such bills, authored by MPs Serhiy Mischenko and Anzhelika Labunska, were registered in parliament.
Mischenko’s bill, which allows convicted persons to receive medical treatment at a clinic abroad if convicts themselves or their relatives and friends pay for the clinic’s services, was registered last summer.
According to Mischenko, the proposed amendments, which he said were “incredibly difficult to get registered,” would permit Tymoshenko to leave her penitentiary and go to Germany for medical treatment.
Labunska’s bill, which was submitted to the Ukrainian parliament on October 22, says that convicted persons may be allowed to go abroad for medical treatment if year-long uninterrupted medical treatment at a hospital located outside their penitentiary fails to heal them completely.
On October 24, the leaders of three opposition factions – Arseniy Yatseniuk (Batkivschyna), Vitali Klitschko (UDAR) and Oleh Tiahnybok (Svoboda) – submitted a bill prohibiting selective justice and paving the way for Ukraine’s signing of an association agreement with the European Union.
The document stipulates, among other things, that amnesty may be granted to an individual in relation to whom the European Court of Human Rights issued a judgment finding that his or her conviction was unjust, Yatseniuk said.
After the bill is passed, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko may be amnestied, he said.
The Ukrainian parliament will debate these three bills on November 5-8.
