It is nearly two months that Ukraine has been without a prosecutor general, and Yuriy Lutsenko, currenly the leader of pro-presidential faction in parliament, is said to be the only person being considered for the country’s top law enforcement position.
Verkhovna Rada Chairman Andriy Parubiy said that no names besides Lutsenko’s had come up during discussions on the matter with President Petro Poroshenko.
“In a conversation with the president no other candidates were named, and his key request to parliament was how to solve the current problem as fast as possible,” Parubiy said in a May 6 interview on Poroshenko-owned Channel Five.
Lutsenko, a 51-year old former minister of internal affairs, currently leads the BPP faction in parliament, and is regarded as being a loyalist to President Poroshenko.
The office of general prosecutor became vacant after Viktor Shokin, another Poroshenko ally who faced overwhelming international criticism for failing to investigate and prosecute crimes ranging from allegations of corruption at state enterprises to the 2014 shootings of protestors on the Maidan, was dismissed in March.
After Shokin’s departure, Poroshenko promised to install a professional and independent prosecutor general in his place.
Legal wrangling
Lutsenko, however, has already faced criticism over allegedly being neither professional nor independent.
His path to becoming prosecutor general faces a serious legal hurdle in that Ukrainian law stipulates that a prosecutor general must have both previous prosecutorial experience and a law degree.
Notably, Lutsenko lacks both – he has no law degree, and also no prior experience as a prosecutor.
Poroshenko’s allies are attempting to pass a law that would ease the requirements.
BPP deputies Ruslan Knyazevych and Serhiy Alekseyev have put forth a law that would allow the president to nominate a prosecutor general without a law degree, so long as the candidate had any other higher education diploma.
The law would also replace the requirement of having direct prosecutorial experience with a requirement to have at least five years of experience in a legislative or law-enforcement branch of government.
In the interview with Channel Five, Parubiy said that the law could be up for a vote relatively soon.
“Already in the next plenary week, we will be able to add to the agenda and review the question of changing the law about the prosecutor, and relative to the candidate that the President must install as general prosecutor,” Parubiy said.
In the interview, Parubiy also declared that he would attempt to ensure the passage of additional amendments to Ukraine’s constitution during the parliamentary session.
In particular, Parubiy said, reforming the judiciary at the constitutional level would be a top priority.
“July 15 is the deadline by which we must do everything possible to complete this reform,” he said.
