Editor’s Note: Every week Kyiv Post journalist Oleg Sukhov picks a winner and loser in Ukraine’s drive to transform itself into a rule-of-law, European-style democracy.
Reformer of the week – Oleksandr Danyliuk
Ex-Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk, a member of presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s team, on April 2 proposed re-launching botched judicial reforms.
The Public Integrity Council, the judiciary’s civil society watchdog, argues that the High Council of Justice and the High Qualification Commission of Judges arbitrarily manipulated the ranking of candidates to promote political loyalists during two competitions for the Supreme Court, first in 2017, and then in 2018 to 2019. The commission denies the accusations.
In March, the High Council of Justice appointed at least 17 candidates with questionable integrity to the Supreme Court and the High Anti-Corruption Court. The Supreme Court candidates had been vetoed by the Public Integrity Council over violations of professional ethics and integrity standards, but the council ignored the vetoes. The judges have yet to be appointed by the president.
Danyliuk also said that Zelenskiy’s team would seek to introduce a more fair election law, replace the leadership of the discredited anti-corruption prosecutor’s office and cleanse the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Security Service of Ukraine and the State Fiscal Service.
In January, Zelenskiy officially supported anti-corruption watchdogs’ agenda, including replacing the leadership of the discredited National Agency for Preventing Corruption, depriving the Security Service of Ukraine of economic functions, cleansing the prosecutor’s office, and replacing the current judicial governance bodies.
Anti-reformer of the week – Yevhen Ryshchuk
Kherson Oblast Deputy Governor Yevhen Ryshchuk told his alleged accomplice Oleksiy Levin (Moskalenko) to “punish” whistleblower Kateryna Gandziuk – for example, throw feces at her – and said that he was ready to pay for it, Moskalenko said in a video released by Slidstvo.info. Gandziuk died in a hospital on Nov. 4 from injuries suffered in an acid attack.
The video is part of “Gandziuk: A Systemic Murder”, a film that had a limited release on March 26 and was published on the Internet on April 3.
Ryshchuk, a member of the Bloc of President Petro Poroshenko, denied the accusations. He has been suspended from his job but has not been fired or charged in the case.
Gandziuk’s father Viktor and the “Who Killed Katya Gandziuk?” group on Facebook have said that Ryshchuk and Kherson Oblast Governor Andriy Gordeyev were implicated in the murder. Both have denied the accusations.
Gordeyev has not been suspended, fired or charged.
Levin, Vladyslav Manger, the speaker of Kherson Oblast’s legislature and a former member of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party, and Igor Pavlovsky – an aide to Mykola Palamarchuk, a lawmaker from President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc – have been charged with organizing Gandziuk’s murder. They deny the charges.
Police have arrested five suspected perpetrators of the murder, all former war veterans from nationalist Dmytro Yarosh’s Ukrainian Volunteer Army, an offshoot of the Right Sector group. They have admitted their involvement in the attack.
