Over 200 lawmakers have signed a petition to the Constitutional Court, asking 11 judges to resign in an attempt to legally resolve the ongoing crisis.
Earlier, 11 of 15 Constitutional Court judges voted to kill crucial anti-corruption legislation, putting Ukraine’s fight against corruption at risk.
If the judges won’t give in, the parliament is ready to obstruct the court’s work by increasing the Constitutional Court’s quorum required to pass a decision from 10 to 17 judges.
Currently, there are 15 judges in the court, and three more seats remain vacant.
The draft law on increasing the quorum comes as an alternative to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s bill, which would fire all 15 judges. According to lawmakers from the president’s Servant of the People party, which holds 246 seats out of 450, there aren’t enough lawmakers ready to support the president’s bill.
Read More: As Zelensky seeks to fire Constitutional Court, experts look for alternative solutions
Zelensky said on Nov. 2 that an ideal solution to the crisis would be if all the judges of the Constitutional Court resigned. He insisted that even the judges who didn’t vote for the controversial rulings need to go.
“It will give these judges a fair chance to be appointed to the new Constitutional Court,” Zelensky said during a talk show on ICTV TV channel.
Constitutional crisis
Ukraine’s constitutional crisis began on Oct. 27, after the Constitutional Court killed the online asset declaration system, allowing officials to escape responsibility for lying on their asset declarations.
As a result, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau would have to close multiple corruption cases. The government decided to disobey the court’s ruling, ordering the National Agency for Preventing Corruption to keep the online asset database.
On Oct. 31, Zelensky said that the Constitutional Court is influenced by oligarchs and pro-Russian politicians and that it could tear the country apart. Zelensky also registered a bill in parliament to fire the court’s judges.
Zelensky asked the members of his Servant of the People party to vote for the bill, even though it is not a perfectly legal way to solve the crisis.
“If I decide that the only way to solve the crisis is through my bill (that would dismiss the Constitutional Court), you must support it. If we find another, less conflictual way, we will propose another solution,” Zelensky said on Nov. 2 in a leaked address to the Servant of the People faction.
The bill violates Article 149 of Ukraine’s constitution, which states that the Constitutional Court’s judges can only be fired by two-thirds of their colleagues.
Servant of the People lawmaker Maryna Bardina says that there aren’t enough votes in support of the president’s bill.
Bardina co-sponsored an alternative bill that would raise the number of Constitutional Court judges required to adopt a ruling to 17.
Next steps
Now, the parliament is seeking a legal way to force the Constitutional Court to back down.
On Nov. 3, lawmakers from three parties – Servant of the People, Voice and European Solidarity – signed a petition requesting that 11 judges who voted to kill the online asset declarations resign. That outcome seems unlikely.
By contrast, the quorum bill has a real chance of receiving the required support. Lawmakers from the Servant of the People party, the 19-member Voice party and the 20-member Dovira parliamentary group have also signed on as co-authors, with their factions supporting the proposal.
However, passing that law won’t solve the existing problems with the Constitutional Court, postponing the changes for at least two years when the nine-year terms of three controversial judges run out in 2022.
Among them is Constitutional Court Head Oleksandr Tupytsky, who is being investigated by the State Investigation Bureau for high treason over his purchase of a land plot in Crimea in 2018, when the peninsula was already occupied by Russia.
Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, told the Kyiv Post that the Constitutional Court can rule that increasing the quorum is an attempt to tamper with judges.
“The constitution prohibits influencing the (Constitutional) Court. Therefore, judges can consider this law as tampering and ignore it,” said Kalenuk on Nov. 2.
Kaleniuk doesn’t support the quorum law.
“It’s dangerous to not have a (functioning) Constitutional Court for two years,” she said.
