Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has suspended the chief of the country’s Constitutional Court from his position for two months, the latest move in a long-running struggle between the tainted court and the country’s leadership.
Earlier, on Dec. 28, the Prosecutor General’s Office charged the chief, Oleksandr Tupytsky, with bribing a witness to give false testimony. The charges stemmed from a criminal case into the unlawful seizure of a factory in Donetsk Oblast in 2006-2010, when Tupytsky was a judge in the local district court.
But the charges also serve a more urgent purpose.
In October, the Constitutional Court issued a widely criticized ruling that effectively eliminated Ukraine’s system of asset declarations for public officials, a crucial pillar of anti-corruption infrastructure. That spurred a constitutional crisis that threatened to undermine the country’s battle with graft and derail it’s cooperation with the West. The Ukrainian government is still looking for a solution.
By law, if the head of the Constitutional Court is charged with a crime, the president can suspend him from office.
After the Prosecutor General’s Office pressed charges against Tupytsky, it also asked the President’s Office to suspend the judge from his post for two months. The next day, on Dec. 29, President Volodymyr Zelensky did just that.
Read More: Prosecutors charge Constitutional Court head with bribing witness, apply for his suspension
“I am signing this decree (on suspending Tupytsky) in the name of reestablishing justice and resolving the constitutional crisis,” Zelensky said, according to a statement released by the President’s Office.
But the decree hardly resolves the crisis.
Instead, it is a temporary measure that prevents the court from doing more damage for two months. According to a Kyiv Post source close to the court, who was not authorized to speak with the press, Tupytsky is the judge who organized the most dubious votes, so his removal will help reign in the errant judicial body.
But even the president’s representative in the Constitutional Court, Fedir Venislavsky, admitted that this is not a long-term solution.
“This is not a firing, this is not a termination of his powers as a judge. This is a temporary measure envisioned by Article 154 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine,” he said. “In other words, the President of Ukraine is acting in complete accordance with his constitutional powers…”
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.
