Parliament has at last taken long-awaited steps to turn public prosecution and the police into law enforcement agencies fit for a democracy. Rows in parliament and lingering controversy accompanied the measure though.
The
new police law, approved on July 2, aims to transform the discredited
militsiya
(militia)
into a national police force – a separate entity overseen by the
Interior Ministry that will be headed by a police chief hired on a
five-year contract. Under the old system, the interior minister was
effectively the head of the militsiya.
The
minister will, however, retain influence over the appointments of
regional police department heads, a provision that prompted fierce
opposition from pro-presidential lawmaker and former Interior
Minister Yuriy Lutsenko.
“Only
in a totalitarian regime does a politician have such powers! We are
preserving the old system!” Lutesnko angrily said in parliament
prior to the vote.
Lutsenko
said the danger was that the new police, under political influence,
would bow to biased orders from above rather than protect citizens.
But
Georgian-born Deputy Interior Minister Eka Zguladze, the architect of
the current police reforms in Ukraine, defended the ministry’s
continued role in overseeing the force.
“No
police force in the world is completely cut off from the [interior]
minister,” she told parliament, citing international experts. She
further argued that without some measure of political control the new
police force could evolve into a “monster” that would act
independently.
Lutsenko
responded that the minister should influence the police indirectly
through budget policies, and that a proposed “internal security”
unit reporting to the minister could respond to any wrongdoing in the
force.
In
the end, parliament sided with Zguladze, passing the law with a big
margin of approval of 278 votes.
Talking
to the Kyiv Post on July 8, Anton Gerashchenko, a lawmaker and
adviser to the Interior Ministry, defended the new police law,
calling it “a comprehensive framework written for decades to come,
in a European way.”
Prospective
police officers will be subject to vetting and competitive hiring
procedures. Detailed instructions on police procedures and powers
have been raised from the regulatory level, and are now included in
the law itself. And among other new measures, citizens will be
guaranteed the right to make video and audio recordings of on-duty
police.
Moreover,
Gerashchenko cited the powers locally elected officials have to sack
unpopular local police chiefs as a counterbalance to the interior
minister’s retained powers.
Similar
fears of political influence over law enforcement dogged voting on a
new law on the public prosecution service, also passed on July 2. The
focus of debate was the independence of the head of the
anti-corruption prosecution department that is attached to the newly
established National Anti-Corruption
Bureau.
Critics
said that if the president could choose the head prosecutor of the
department, the new institutions might find themselves powerless to
prosecute corrupt officials if those officials enjoyed political
cover from the head of state.
As
debate raged in parliament, the proposed law repeatedly fell several
votes short of the required 226 needed for it to pass, with junior
coalition parties Samopomich and the Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko
refusing to vote in favor. Samopomich
lawmaker Olena Sotnyk said she was voting against the law because it
“eliminates the idea of an independent Anti-Corruption Bureau.”
Eventually
a compromise was struck, with parliament opting to appoint an
11-member commission that would in turn be responsible for appointing
the head of the anti-corruption prosecution department. Seven of the
commission members would be picked by Parliament, with the other four
being chosen by the Prosecutor General’s Office, beholden to the
president.
Oleksandr
Banchuk, an expert from civic group Reanimation Package of Reforms,
said the new checks and balances might ease some fears of the
president having too much influence on the anti-corruption
prosecution department.
“Even
if the president controls the four [commission] members picked by the
Prosecutor General’s Office – via his leverage over the
prosecutor general – as well as some of the seven picked by
parliament, there is at least a chance that the reform forces in
parliament will have some say in the appointment of the
[anti-corruption department] prosecutor.”
The
law also gives the
prosecutor general the power to fire the anti-corruption prosecutor
at his discretion, Banchuk
said.
Moreover,
pro-presidential parties also managed to water down changes to the
actual public prosecution, by retaining the general prosecutor’s
control over the commissions that hire, fire and vet local
prosecutors.
Although
unhappy
with these issues, Banchuk,
who has been lobbying for prosecutorial reform for three years, was
happy to see at least some changes finally made. He said he hoped for
more professional hiring procedures for prosecutors, similar to the
ones put in place for hiring police officers.
Artem
Sytnyk, the current head of the Anti-corruption Bureau, didn’t seem
alarmed by the changes. He said the law itself guarantees the
anti-corruption
department
prosecutor complete independence, as it states that neither the
prosecutor general nor his deputies can give the special prosecutor
instructions.
“All
these discussions are built mostly on emotions,” Sytnyk told the
Kyiv Post.
Batkivshchyna
lawmaker Serhiy Vlasenko
still wasn’t convinced though. Speaking to the Kyiv Post, he said
that prosecutorial reform could turn into a never-ending story, as
“there is no will to reform, only public relations.”
“Until
we change the servile mentality of the people, nothing will change.
We have adopted a new progressive law, yes, but the prosecutors are
resisting the reforms,” Vlasenko
said.
Kyiv
Post staff writers Alyona Zhuk and Johannes Wamberg Andersen can be
reached at [email protected] and [email protected].
