Faced with pressure from dozens of media outlets, as well as his fellow party colleagues, the author of the controversial law on criminalization of libel called off his draft from parliament late on Sept. 25.
Vtaliy Zhuravsky, a member of the pro-presidential Party of Regions, had previously defended his draft law, saying the legislation is needed to rein in journalists before the election. The draft passed the first reading on Sept. 18 by 244 votes out of 450 members. The Party of Regions, the Communist Party and People’s Party of Volodymyr Lytvyn supported the law that could send journalists for up to five years in prison for libel and defamation.
After the first reading is passed, the law no longer can be taken off the agenda simply. So Zhuravskiy instead registered a new draft resolution to call off his previous law. But that resolution still has to get a majority of votes in parliament to annul the first reading of the libel law.
In his statement posted late on the night of Sept. 25 on the Party of Regions website, Zhuravskiy said that he will go back to his original initiative after the election is over.
“I have decided today to take this issue off in the legal sense, but not in the political sense. I stand by my political positions and convictions: for a long time there has been a need in the society to increase resposibility for infringement on the honor and dignity of every person, not just a politician,” Zhuravskiy said.
His statement came out right before President Viktor Yanukovych was supposed to meet U.S. President Barack Obama in New York at a formal dinner, which is a part of the program at the ongoing U.N. General Assembly.
Dozens of online media outlets took part in a massive protest by posting a black banner on their websites on Sept. 25, including the Kyiv Post, Ukrainska Pravda,Korrespondent, Segodnya.ua, LigaBusinessInform, UkraNews, Telekritika and others.
“Call their office, write them an email and ask why they did it,” the banner says. It also contains a link to the code for those who want to install the same banner on their sites in Ukrainian, Russian and English.
Several weekly newspapers and magazines, including the Kyiv Post, Kommersant, Korrespondent, and ZIK, designed blank covers for their Thursday and Friday editions to continue the protest.
Meanwhile, in New York, President Yanukovych faced questions about the law. He told the public there that it was no accident that Zhuravsky called off his controversial draft.
“Zhuravsky did not take the decision to call it off by accident,” Yanukovych said. “He heard my point of view, the point of view of his fellow party members. These kinds of decisions cannot be taken hastily.”
Yanukovych said the author clearly wants to correct his own mistake, which would cost the nation’s leaders too much in the way of their already tattered reputation internationally and at home.
“If we tell [the world] that we are creating for the journalists, for the media, all conditions, while we do the opposite – nobody will understand us,” Yanukovych’s press service quoted him as saying.
