A day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suspended the head of the Constitutional Court from his job for two months, that legal body says the decision must be immediately reversed.
The move to suspend the chief justice, Oleksandr Tupytsky, violates multiple articles of the Constitution, the court said in a statement on Dec. 30.
Tupytsky’s suspension is “legally null and void because it was issued by the President of Ukraine in excess of his constitutional powers” and in violation of constitutional and legal principles, the court added.
The court also characterized the move as “unlawful interference” in Tupytsky’s performance of his duties.
In October, the Constitutional Court issued a scandalous ruling obliterating the country’s asset declaration system for officials, which threatened to undermine Ukraine’s battle with graft and derail its cooperation with the West. Since then, the government has struggled to resolve the ensuing constitutional crisis.
Then, on Dec. 28, the Prosecutor General’s Office charged Tupytsky with bribing a witness to give false testimony. The charges stem from a case surrounding the unlawful seizure of a factory in Donetsk Oblast in 2006-2010, when Tupytsky was a judge in a local district court.
That allowed the government to temporarily sideline the chief justice.
By law, if the head of the Constitutional Court is charged with a crime, the president can suspend him. After pressing the charges against Tupytsky, the Prosecutor General’s Office asked Zelensky to do just that. On Dec. 29, he did.
Read More: Prosecutors charge Constitutional Court head with bribing witness, apply for his suspension
The next day, the Constitutional Court fired back.
In its statement, the court implied that Zelensky could face criminal charges for interfering in the work of a state actor and a judicial body.
The Criminal Code of Ukraine “stipulates that no one is obliged to carry out clearly criminal orders and directives,” it wrote, adding that anyone who gives or fulfills such an order can be held liable under the law.
But the Constitutional Court’s words are unlikely to change Zelensky’s mind about his decision. On Dec. 29, he said that he signed the decree to suspend Tupytsky “in the name of reestablishing justice and resolving the constitutional crisis.”
Still, not everyone has supported the move.
In a post on Twitter, Serhiy Verlanov, a lawyer who led the State Tax Service in 2019-2020, described Tupytsky’s suspension as “barely lawful.”
The measure is “very risky as it is not prescribed by the Constitution. Moreover, it is direct influence on the judiciary,” he wrote. “To govern doesn’t mean (to) manage a private company.”
Since the constitutional crisis erupted, the Ukrainian government has had little success in finding a solution.
Previously, Zelensky proposed another way of resolving the crisis — a ‘nuclear option’ of sorts. In October, he registered a draft law in parliament to fire the judges of the Constitutional Court and annul their scandalous ruling.
However, under the Ukrainian Constitution, the court is nearly omnipotent. Its judges can only be fired by a vote of two-thirds of the Constitutional Court. For that reason, many — including lawmakers from Zelensky’s own party — concluded that the move would be unconstitutional.
While suspending Tupytsky does not resolve the crisis, it likely buys the government time to seek a solution.
