OP-ED

Group of authors: Now is the moment to transform Ukraine

By Kristina Kvien, Matti Maasikas, Melinda Simmons.

Published Oct. 22, 2021 at 3:01 am

The Constitutional Court of Ukraine on June 23, 2020 in Kyiv. The notoriously corrupt 15-member court, along with its judicial partners in the Kyiv City Administrative Court led by Judge Pavlo Vovk, have issued rules that deliver smashing blows to the nation’s ability to combat corruption. The Constitutional Court has invalidated Ukraine’s strong legal requirements for public income and asset disclosures by officials, while removing any criminal penalties for illegal enrichment. The Vovk-led court, meanwhile, ruled that Artem Sytnyk, head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, should be dismissed because his appointment in 2015 was illegal. Combined with the uselessness of Prosecutor General Iryna Venedytkova in pursuing criminal cases against top-level corruption, and the dismal records of other judicial bodies, Ukraine’s drive for rule of law is going nowhere fast. President Volodymyr Zelensky convened an emergency meeting of the National Security and Defense Council on Oct. 29, amid calls to disband the Constitutional Court.

Photo by Kostyantyn Chernichkin

With the support of President Zelensky, Ukraine is on the verge of enacting a fundamental reform that has been thirty years in the making. Ukraine’s new judicial reform laws, which recently passed the Verkhovna Rada, have the potential not only to build a judiciary that is trusted by Ukrainians by holding corrupt judges to account, but also to reduce the influence of vested interests who use the current system to undermine rule of law in Ukraine for their own personal benefit.