Despite strong protests from anti-corruption activists and foreign diplomats, Ukrainian judges have chosen their own watchers.
On March 9, the Congress of Judges filled four vacant spots on the High Council of Judges, the judiciary’s main governing and oversight body.
The four new members of the High Council are Supreme Court judge Valeriy Sukhoviy, Kyiv Court of Appeals judge Vitaly Salikhov, Serhiy Bolotin, head of the local Khmelnytsky Court of Appeals and Inna Plakhtiy, a judge of a local Lutsk court.
While the four judges don’t have known corruption scandals, judicial watchdogs have argued that allowing the old unreformed judiciary to appoint its own oversight will only legitimize and entrench today’s corrupt system.
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Four days before the Congress of Judges was scheduled to meet, ambassadors of the G7 countries issued a joint statement asking it to abstain from appointing new Council members.
“Ambassadors urged the Congress of Judges to postpone appointments to the High Council of Justice and the Constitutional Court, pending the establishment of transparent, credible selection processes,” the March 5 statement reads.
The G7 ambassadors and Ukrainian anti-corruption nonprofits urged President Volodymyr Zelensky and his governing Servant of the People party to pass legislation changing how candidates to the High Council of Justice are selected.
The current High Council of Justice is infamously implicated in the case of Pavlo Vovk, one of Ukraine’s most controversial judges.
Vovk, the head of the Kyiv District Administrative Court, is suspected of abuse of power and involvement in organized crime. His case has become the symbol of endemic corruption in Ukrainian courts.
In September, the High Council of Justice unanimously refused to suspend Vovk, despite major corruption allegations against him from Ukraine’s anti-corruption officials.
“The system of selecting HCJ members needs to be radically changed, so that (HCJ) members are not elected by the judicial mafia and politicians, but rather are elected by members of non-government watchdogs and independent international experts,” Mykhailo Zhernakov, head of the judicial think tank Dejure wrote on Facebook.
However, the government doesn’t seem to be listening.
