See related stories here, here and here.
Few candidates have so far applied for the ongoing competition for the High Anti-Corruption Court and additional jobs at the Supreme Court compared with last year’s competition for the Supreme Court, according to information on the website of the High Qualification Commission, which is running the competition.
Only 39 candidates had applied for 12 jobs at the High Anti-Corruption Court’s appeal chamber by the Sept. 14 deadline, and 89 candidates had applied for 27 other vacancies at the High Anti-Corruption Court.
In addition, 262 candidates applied for 78 Supreme Court jobs.
This means that about four candidates will compete for each anti-corruption court job and three candidates for each Supreme Court job.
The list of candidates may lengthen, however, because the High Qualification Commission is expected to accept applications that were sent on Sept. 14 and delivered later.
Last year, 846 candidates applied for 120 Supreme Court jobs, with seven people competing for each job.
Experts argue that one of the reasons for the low number of candidates currently is a lack of trust in competitions held by the High Qualification Commission.
“Many were disappointed with the results of the competition for the Supreme Court, which was held with numerous manipulations,” Iryna Shyba from the DEJURE Foundation legal think-tank told the Kyiv Post.
It was also very difficult to collect documents on time due to summer vacations, Shyba added.
During last year’s Supreme Court competition, some candidates were given tests that coincided with cases that they had considered during their career, which was deemed by critics to be a tool of promoting political loyalists. Moreover, the High Qualification Commission allowed 43 candidates who had not gotten sufficient scores during practical tests to take part in the next stage, changing its rules amid the competition.
The commission also refused to publish the scores for candidates’ psychological tests and failed to set a minimum score for psychological tests. Moreover, the commission used corporate loyalty tests, which stipulated loyalty as a major characteristic of a judge – as a result, independent candidates were prevented from getting a higher score, while political loyalists were encouraged, according to the Public Integrity Council.
Another problem is that, during the Supreme Court competition, the High Qualification Commission banned many lawyers from the competition due to red tape because they allegedly did not provide all necessary documents, and the same trick may be repeated during the competition for the anti-corruption court, Anastasia Krasnosilska from the Anti-Corruption Action Center said.
The competition for the High Anti-Corruption Court and 78 Supreme Court jobs was launched on Aug. 2.
Vitaly Tytych, a member of the Public Integrity Council, estimated the chances of creating a genuinely independent anti-corruption court as “zero,” given that what he views as the High Qualification Commission’s subjective and arbitrary assessment methodology for judges had not been changed. The commission has denied that its methodology is arbitrary.
During last year’s Supreme Court competition, 210 scores were assigned for anonymous legal knowledge and practical tests, and the High Qualification Commission could assign 790 points out of 1,000 points without giving any explicit reasons.
To make the competition’s criteria objective, 750 points should be assigned for anonymous legal knowledge tests and practical tests, Tytych said.
