Reformer of the week: Anna Kalynchuk
Anna Kalynchuk, a 23-year-old lawyer at the Justice Ministry’s lustration department, wrote on Dec. 14 that the department had submitted to the High Council of Justice a proposal to fire 29 judges who passed unlawful rulings against EuroMaidan protesters in 2013-2014.
The department is in charge of firing, under the 2014 lustration law, top officials and judges who served ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.
Kalynchuk was scheduled to become the acting head of the department after reformist official Tetiana Kozachenko resigned as its head in November. But her appointment was blocked by Deputy Justice Minister Hanna Onyshchenko in what critics believe to be the authorities’ reluctance to appoint an independent official.
Meanwhile, the High Council of Justice has been dragging its feet on earlier proposals to fire judges subject to lustration. It is highly likely that it will not be able to do that by the legal deadline set for early 2017, Mykhailo Zhernakov, an expert at the Reanimation Package of Reforms, told the Kyiv Post.
Earlier this year parliament dismissed 19 judges under lustration, while President Petro Poroshenko fired 10 judges.
The lustration of Yanukovych-era top officials, except for judges, is scheduled to be completed this month. Kozachenko said last month that top officials had sabotaged lustration: specifically, Poroshenko had refused to fire Kirovohrad Oblast Governor Serhiy Kuzmenko and also illegally appointed two other Yanukovych-era officials: his deputy chief of staff Oleksiy Dniprov, and Luhansk Oblast Governor Yuriy Harbuz.
Anti-reformer of the week: Mykhailo Okhendovsky
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau on Dec. 14 served a notice of suspicion to Mykhailo Okhendovsky, chairman of the Central Election Commission.
Okhendovsky was charged with receiving bribes worth $100,000 in 2010 and $61,000 in 2012 from ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. His name features in the party’s off-the-book ledgers submitted to the anti-corruption bureau in May.
Meanwhile, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a fugitive lawmaker charged with embezzlement, has told the Slidstvo.info investigative television show that Okhendovsky had registered him as a candidate for parliament despite his violation of residency rules in 2014 after he paid $6 million to President Petro Poroshenko’s party. Okhendovsky and Poroshenko deny the claim.
Okhendovsky has also been accused of rigging elections. He denies all the accusations.
The authority of Okhendovsky and several other members of the election commission expired in 2014. But Poroshenko has been reluctant to replace them.
Critics say that Poroshenko has been using Okhendovsky to protect his political interests. For instance, in March he approved the Verkhovna Rada’s decision to expel lawmaker Yegor Firsov, a critic of Poroshenko and his allies, from parliament.
In a similar way, Poroshenko and the Verkhovna Rada have refused to replace Yuriy Baulin, chairman of the Constitutional Court, and five other judges of the court being investigated by the Prosecutor General’s Office on suspicion of helping Yanukovych usurp power. The judges are also alleged to have obtained $6 million in payments from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, according to the party’s off-the-book ledgers.
