Nine months into his presidency, Viktor Yanukovych clearly has no intention of rooting out corruption, solving the nation’s most serious crimes, establishing the rule of law or creating an independent criminal justice system. The evidence supporting this conclusion is broad and deep.
But one needs to look no further than the appointment this month of Party of Regions crony Viktor Pshonka as the nation’s 10th general prosecutor.
Pshonka served as prosecutor in Donetsk until 2003. He has been at the center of numerous botched, stifled or covered-up investigations of high-profile crimes.
One of the most troubling is the still-unresolved 2001 clubbing death of investigative journalist Ihor Oleksandrov, who exposed corruption among law enforcement in Donetsk when Pshonka was the top prosecutor there. After pressure mounted, prosecutors initially tried to blame the death on a vagrant.
Pshonka makes no pretense of being an independent prosecutor. In a Nov. 6 interview with the pro-presidential Inter TV channel, Pshonka described his role this way: “As prosecutor general, I am a member of the team tasked with carrying out all the decisions made by the president.”
One of those decisions appears to be the pursuit of criminal charges, announced Nov. 9, against ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine’s former top cop, allegedly involving Hr 40,000 ($5,000).
Considering the billions of dollars routinely pilfered from the state budget, not to mention the scores of unsolved murders, charging Lutsenko is a strange way to begin an “anti-corruption” campaign.
But, of course, the only anti-corruption campaign under way is a highly selective one – mainly aimed at former top officials of the previous government led by ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, several of whom have been held in jail for months without due process or formal charges.
Anyone considered not loyal to the Yanukovych administration may also find themselves targets for investigation.
Given this administration’s primitive clan mindset, the list of targets could be long and include independent journalists, students, religious leaders, non-governmental organizations and anyone else who doesn’t pledge allegiance to Yanukovych’s Party of Regions.
We finally found something to agree about with Security Service of Ukraine chief Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, owner of Inter TV channel.
In Brussels on a “charm offensive” with European parliamentarians, Khoroshkovsky told Martin Banks in an article with The Parliament that corruption “at all levels” was the “biggest impediment or obstacle” to the reform process in Ukraine.
We agree. Unfortunately, Yanukovych, Pshonka and Khoroshkovsky are part of the problem, not the solution.
If the new general prosecutor wants to start an anti-corruption campaign, he should charge ex-President Leonid Kuchma and current parliament speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn for the Sept. 16, 2000, murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze.
Despite their denials, ample evidence exists to try both of them for ordering the murder and complicity in the cover-up. We hope the European Union is paying close attention to these ongoing travesties of justice.
