Reformer of the week – Oksana Syroid
Samopomich party lawmaker Oksana Syroid on June 20 started a hunger strike to protest what she sees as President Petro Poroshenko’s efforts to discredit and obstruct Samopomich and its leader, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovy.
Syroid, a deputy speaker of parliament, went on hunger strike in front of the Presidential Administration together with Oleh Berezyuk, leader of Samopomich’s parliamentary faction, and was hospitalized on June 24.
Poroshenko’s critics accuse the president of banning all other regions from helping Lviv to dispose of its garbage, while he denies the accusations. Garbage has been accumulating in the city since a court ordered the closure of Lviv Oblast’s main garbage disposal facility in 2016 after a fire. Central authorities have also been reluctant to re-open the existing garbage disposal site or allocate a land plot for a new one.
Samopomich believes the “garbage blockade” of Lviv to be a ploy by the president to discredit and influence Sadovy, who could be a major competitor of Poroshenko in the 2019 presidential election.
Syroid and her fellow Samopomich lawmakers have authored many reformist initiatives, including bills to create an independent anti-corruption court and to bring the prosecution service and the judiciary in line with European standards.
Anti-reformer of the week – Serhiy Kozyakov
Serhiy Kozyakov, head of the High Qualification Commission, deserves the title of “Judicial Reform’s Gravedigger” for running roughshod over the Public Integrity Council, the judiciary’s civil society watchdog.
The commission has so far overridden 78 percent of the Public Integrity Council’s vetoes on 76 candidates for Supreme Court jobs deemed to be corrupt or dishonest.
Mikhail Slobodin, a judge at the Kharkiv Commercial Court of Appeal, said on June 22 that by rejecting the civic watchdog’s vetoes, the commission had destroyed society’s trust in the ongoing Supreme Court competition.
“Francis Fukuyuama said that society’s trust in the institutions of liberal democracy was a necessary condition of these institutions’ existence,” he said. “…We, judges, have lost the chance of self-cleansing that destiny gave us in 2014.”
Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said on June 29 that, if not enough candidates who meet moral and professional standards were found during the ongoing competition, the authorities should hold another one. Meanwhile, Jan Tombinski, the European Union’s ex-ambassador to Ukraine, said on June 27 that Ukraine should stop imitating reforms.
Roman Brehei, a judge at the Kirovohrad District Administrative Court, has asked law enforcement bodies to investigate the High Qualification Commission over what he sees as a blatantly illegal decision to let 299 candidates with insufficient scores run in the competition.
The High Qualification Commission on June 26 overrode the Public Integrity Council’s veto on Deputy Prosecutor General Angela Stryzhevska in what critics saw as an effort to promote a loyalist of the authorities.
Stryzhevska has a conflict of interest because of her prosecutorial duties and has committed procedural violations as a judge before, the watchdog said. Stryzhevska and the commission deny accusations of wrongdoing.
