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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

THE EUROPE TEST

25 May, 1999 - 00:00

By Oksana PANCHENKO and Natalia VIKULINA, The Day

"I am sure that Ukraine must follow the European road and changing Presidents
would mean changing the political course. I have no right to let that happen."

Leonid Kuchma

The CE Monitoring Committee has moved for suspending the Ukrainian parliamentary
delegation's credentials. CE experts Tjunne Kelam and Hanne Severinsen
believe that Ukraine has failed to demonstrate any tangible progress in
implementing its commitments to the Council of Europe, primarily in terms
of legal reform and repealing capital punishment. Ukrainian legislator
Roman Zvarych says that the Ukrainian delegation will have to act as a
fireman at the CE Parliamentary Assembly's session this June, having considerably
fewer arguments than it did in January. "One has to ask Leonid Kuchma why
the four years of Ukraine's CE membership was not long enough to honor
Ukraine's commitments," People's Deputy Serhiy Holovaty stated in an interview
with The Day. "Now that the campaign is underway we hear about his
great prestige in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world. Meanwhile there is
the high likelihood of suspending the Ukrainian delegation's voting power
and the next logical step could well be Ukraine's expulsion, and this would
be the direct result of Leonid Kuchma's policy."

Mr. Holovaty also noted that "in the month left before the Parliamentary
Assembly's final decision it is impossible to accomplish what has not been
done for the past four years. No one will listen to our promises and guarantees,
for this is something the Council of Europe has heard already," adding
that "there is only one hope: the Constitutional Court ruling that death
sentences are unconstitutional."

How is one to believe this, knowing that both the President and Speaker
spoke for Onopriyenko's capital punishment even before the end of the trial?
On the other hand, capital punishment is far from the main or only thing
CEPA finds unsatisfactory about Ukraine. The bills on the judicial system
as well as on the civil and criminal codes have been approved only in the
first reading. Drafting the Code of Criminal Procedural took five years.
The document is still with the Cabinet, although its revolutionizing clauses
would have neutralized much of the CEPA claims, particularly with regard
to the division of power, setting up an independent judiciary, providing
human rights guarantees, specifically in criminal proceedings, and so on.

Vasyl Maliarenko, Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, head
of the Supreme Court Criminal Board, says the current criminal procedural
practice strongly reminds one of Inquisition. "Evidence of this is the
fact that pretrial investigation is in the hands of executive authorities
and largely subordinated to the inquest procedures. Judges are forced to
act as prosecutors, a role totally alien to their status," he stated at
a meeting of Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, and US judges on May 21. There
is no adversary system in the true sense of the word, just as there is
no equality before the law and the court applying to a janitor and President
in equal measure. And the lack of fulfillment of one of the CE's main requirements,
guarantees of the freedom of the press and other media, was vividly demonstrated
on the very first day the presidential campaign officially started. Almost
all newspaper were flooded by reports about "nationwide" nomination of
the current President, without a word about other candidates.

Our politicians' resistance to the CE requirements can only benefit
those campaigning for the Eastern road. Communist Boris Oliynyk, chairman
of the parliamentary delegation, told Interfax Ukraine that "it is not
exactly pleasant to deal with an organization supporting the bloodshed
in Yugoslavia, so our expulsion from Europe will not upset many." Judging
from the current regime's conduct, those at the top would not mind Ukraine
getting out from under CE control and "democratizing" influence prior to
the elections, like it happened with Belarus which currently shows no inclination
to resume a course of democratic reform.

 

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