An ongoing competition for the new Supreme Court has raised questions about its transparency and leaves broad scope for manipulation, experts believe.
President Petro Poroshenko and his party’s lawmaker Oleksandr Hranovsky, often seen as a gray cardinal overseeing courts, have been accused of influencing the creation of the new Supreme Court and trying to replace allies of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych with their own loyalists, which they deny.
On March 28, the second stage of testing of Supreme Court candidates was completed, with 382 candidates for 120 court seats passing to the next stage. The selection of the judges by the High Qualification Commission and the High Council of Justice is scheduled to be completed by June.
The High Qualification Commission, which had previously denied accusations of sabotage, did not respond to a request for comment.
One controversial decision was that the High Qualification Commission on March 29 allowed 43 candidates who had not gotten sufficient scores to take part in the third stage.
A possible reason is that the commission wanted to make sure that certain necessary candidates pass to the next stage, possibly for political reasons, said Mykhailo Zhernakov, a judicial expert at the Reanimation Package of Reforms and member of the Civic Integrity Council, a civil-society watchdog over judicial reform.
The methodology of the tests also raises questions, with controversial candidates with dubious reputation getting the highest scores, and respected legal scholars ending up with the lowest ones, Zhernakov said.
“The methodology provides for schemes to bypass tests and promote necessary people,” he added.
The Civic Integrity Council on March 31 urged the High Qualification Commission to publish the texts of the candidates’ works, the methodology of the tests and the scores that each member of the commission gave.
Moreover, the High Qualification Commission has promised to publish the dossiers of the candidates but has effectively failed to fully deliver on its promise, Zhernakov said.
The commission published some minor useless parts of the dossiers on its site and has provided full access to some of the dossiers to the Civic Integrity Council, Zhernakov said. But it has refused to provide full access to all of the dossiers either to the public or the council, he added.
Explaining its rationale, the commission has argued that part of the information is confidential.
Another problem is that the share of candidates from outside the notoriously corrupt and politicized judiciary is relatively small.
Of the 382 candidates, 299 are incumbent or former judges, and 83 are lawyers and legal scholars, the Chesno civic watchdog said on March 31.
About 100 of the candidates have a controversial reputation and unexplained wealth, Zhernakov said. He added that the Civic Integrity Council would seek to veto their appointment.
Such a veto can be overridden by two-thirds of the High Qualification Commission’s full membership.
Yet another scandal emerged when it turned out that some of the practical tests coincided with the cases that some of the candidates had resolved before, which would give them a competitive edge.
Controversial candidates for the Supreme Court include Pavlo Vovk, chairman of the Kyiv Administrative District Court. Vovk used to be an aide to Serhiy Kivalov, a powerful ex-ally of Yanukovych, and an associate of Hranovsky, with whom he was filmed meeting in a Kyiv restaurant in 2016. His court has also ruled in favor of Hranovsky proteges.
Another candidate with a dubious reputation is Bohdan Monich, a deputy head of the Council of Judges, which is seen as highly politicized and representing the vested interests of the corrupt judiciary.
Judges of the High Administrative Court who successfully passed the tests are also controversial because they have re-instated judges who persecuted EuroMaidan protesters in 2013 to 2014.
People’s Front lawmaker Leonid Yemets, who didn’t pass to the next stage, questioned the results of the tests. He said that his work had been checked by Yury Titov, an ally of Yemets’ political enemy Kivalov.
