The door to Europe, and specifically the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement was all but slammed shut by the rejection
on Wednesday of former Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko’s cassation
appeal.  Ukraine’s High Specialized Court upheld the outcome of a trial,
which, as repeatedly pointed out by the EU and the democratic
community, “did not respect international standards as regards fair, transparent and independent legal processes.

Rule
of law was just as removed from a courtroom in Zaporizhzhya, which on April 2 convicted two former sacristans of the Svyatopokrovsk Church and
the brother of one of them to 15 and 14-year prison sentences over the
bomb blast in the Church on 28 July 2010.  Judge Minasov ignored the fact that there was no evidence
in the case aside from multiple “confessions” made without proper
defence, and almost certainly under physical and psychological
pressure.  The confirmation of this by two forensic psychologists was
ignored, while a third report which interpreted smiles, gestures etc
during the night interrogations as evidence of an “inclination to
crime”  was quoted in detail in the judgement.  Minasov had rejected
applications to have all forensic psychologists summoned to give
evidence.  The list of irregularities in this case is as long as that in
the trial of Lutsenko, and widely believed to be linked with the fact
that President Yanukovych at the time demanded arrests within the week.

In
both these cases, as well as the ongoing attempt to charge former Prime
Minister Yulia Tymoshenko with murder, few believe that the judges – or
prosecutor – in the cases are acting autonomously.

The
case against Tymoshenko encountered a bump on April 2 with a key
witness Serhiy Taruta testifying that at the time of the killing of MP
and businessman Shcherban, there was no conflict between him and
Tymoshenko.

The
case is so dodgy that inconvenient bleeps may not overly worry those
pulling the strings.  Renat Kuzmin, deputy orosecutor general, whose
trips abroad to justify the trials of opposition leaders are organized by such PR companies as Burson-Marsteller, will simply accuse all critics, including authoritative Western observers of defamation if they suggest any political motivation.

There
were plenty of other uncomfortable subjects during the week.  They
included the president’s income declaration which, for the second year
in a row, declared 15 and a half million UAH in “royalties.” 
The latter must be understood very loosely since the president did not
publish a single word in 2012.  In fact, had he published even one book
the royalties received per word would quite possibly outdo many
international bestseller writers. The amount would also instantly
bankrupt most publishing houses, at least in Ukraine.  Not, however, the
Donetsk publisher Novy Svit which in 2011 paid 16.4 million UAH for all
President Yanukovych’s works, past, present and future.  It now
transpires that this was only the first installment of an ongoing fee.

The
use of the rightwing VO Svoboda Party to present the Party of the
Regions as antidote to creeping fascism and xenophobia had a novel
application on Wednesday with a number of Svoboda activists detained by
police in Kyiv and interrogated for many hours.  The events had seemed
to promise high drama with a Party of the Regions MP Iryna Horina
reporting on Tuesday that after the close of the Verkhovna Rada’s
evening session she and other women MPs had been pelted with snowballs,
ice and dirt by members of a political protest.  She later apparently claimed that there had been an attempt to kill her.

A
criminal investigation is underway, and the police felt no need to
follow the restrictions of the new Criminal Procedure Code on how many
hours witnesses can be interrogated. From a PR point of view, a trial
would be as much of a loser as trying now to bring charges of
hooliganism against the young man who so famously felled the then
presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych with an egg in 2004.

Thursday
was a full-on day for Ukraine’s MPs though few of the events bore much
relation to parliamentary democracy.  With the opposition continuing to
block the Verkhovna Rada tribune, the Party of the Regions, Communists
and others who vote with the government decided to attempt a kind of
outreach parliament – in the premises of the parliamentary committees on
Bankova St.   There was supposedly a vote on this with 244 in favour
(226 is a simple majority), however leader of the Batkivshchyna faction
in parliament, Arseny Yatsenyuk asserted that only 168 MPs were actually
present.

It was one side’s word against the other’s since opposition MPs were not allowed into the building on Bankova St.

Interpretation
of the Parliamentary Regulations also depends on which side you listen
to, and how one is to understand “exceptional circumstances”.

This
is of enormous importance since the pro-government MPs (in person, or
in name and MP card alone) managed to vote on 22 laws, one of which
changed the 2013 State Budget.  All of this without open discussion and
without the presence of the opposition who numerically cannot override a
government vote, but can at least point to dangers in the laws passed.

What
is particularly disturbing is that analysts asked by the Deutsche Welle
Ukrainian Service considered the votes to be illegitimate, but were not
at all confident that they would be revoked. Former MP Yury
Klyuchkovsky pointed out that there had been similar situations during
the 2000s and the laws passed, however dubiously, remained in force. 
The Constitutional Court then refused to consider submissions from MPs
asking for the laws to be declared unconstitutional.  In this regard
it’s worth noting that the Constitutional Court in March for the fourth
time refused to consider the highly controversial language law signed
into force by President Yanukovych in August 2012.  This law effectively
ignores the constitutional norm stipulating that Ukrainian is the sole
official language and significantly increases the role of the Russian
language.

Another
specific smell from Ukraine’s parliamentarianism comes from turncoats
or, in the Ukrainian, “tushki” (carcases).  On Thursday Speaker Rybak
announced that four Batkivshchyna faction MPs had changed sides. 
Interpretation of motives and / or incentives will inevitably depend on
whose version you trust, however the phenomenon cannot under any
circumstances be considered healthy.

It
is also difficult to see it as democratic. Even during the last
elections where 50% of the candidates entered parliament on party lists
and 50% stood for election on an individual basis, the vast majority of
voters would have voted for the party.

If
MPs can then choose where the grass for them is greener, the voters’
electoral choice is rendered meaningless, like so many other fundamental
components of democracy increasingly treated as cosmetic props.

Halya Coynash is a member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group. This was originally published here at Current Politics in Ukraine website.