A political witch hunt seems to be under way with the Prosecutor’s Office leading the chase.

Any alleged criminal activity by politicians should be investigated. However, the decision to investigate close allies of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko – but not anyone close to President Viktor Yanukovych – is an abuse of power intended to weaken political opponents.

Any corruption accusations involving high-ranking officials, such as those against former Economy Minister Bohdan Danylyshyn, should be taken seriously. Leading politicians have long accused each other of corruption, but no major cases have ever reached trial and the stench of corrupt practices remains. On most occasions, the accusations have gone no further than loud words on television talk shows, with no proof offered to back them up.

A credible investigation of all such allegations, where there is sufficient evidence to warrant it, would be welcome and send a strong signal that the government is serious about fighting one of the major problems that blights the country.

Instead, the authorities are using the general prosecutor’s office as a political weapon to hamstring the opposition. Tymoshenko allies are in jail as prosecutors investigate their alleged crimes, while alleged wrongdoing by the Yanukovych gang gets no attention.

This is all part of a sordid trend aimed at shutting out Tymoshenko by, for example, cutting her and her supporters off the airwaves.

For law enforcers to even start making a claim that they are professionally rather than politically motivated, investigations could start looking into the caught-on-tape allegations against First Deputy Prime Minister Andriy Klyuyev by Deputy Prime Minister Borys Kolesnykov. On Aug. 27, Kolesnykov accused Klyuyev of having a road resurfaced to his house, stopping short of the village of Obukhiv. Klyuyev denied this was true. But here’s a perfect example of alleged abuse of state power in the name of personal interests – straight from the mouth of a deputy prime minister!

We could also ask for a real probe into the shady transfer of the Mezhyhirya mansion to Yanukovych or the ongoing suspiciously cheap sales of state assets or dozens of other serious alleged crimes dating back decades.

Former President Viktor Yushchenko killed his political career by failing to make good on his promise to “put bandits in jail” when he came to power in 2005 after the Orange Revolution.

Perhaps Yanukovych’s slogan could be: “Put bandits in jail, but only if they are members of the opposition.”