Poroshenko lobbying judges in event of election loss, MP says

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is lobbying two
loyal judges to remain on the Supreme Council of Justice should he lose the
presidential elections, MP Serhiy Leshchenko of the Poroshenko Bloc alleged in
a television news broadcast on Feb. 11. A congress of lawyers will occur on
Feb. 15-16 to determine who will occupy two seats of the 21-member council, an
oversight body responsible for appointing and dismissing judges, reviewing
complaints, and approving their arrest. “In the hands of a president usurping
power, the Council can serve as a billy club to enact reprisals. For those who
lose power, it can be used to stop undesired rulings against them,” Leshchenko
said.

Two candidates being advocated by Poroshenko – with the
help of several MPs – are already members and their reappointment would violate
the Constitution, Leshchenko said. They are Pavlo Hrechkivskiy, who was accused
of taking a half-million-dollar bribe by Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko in
2016. The criminal case was dismissed by a court. Oleksiy Malovatskiy, who
served as the deputy head of the legal department of Poroshenko’s presidential
campaign in 2014, is being investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau
for his role in enabling a company in Poroshenko’s entourage to secure natural
gas extraction rights, alleged Leshchenko. NGO activists confirmed that these
two candidacies are under consideration at the congress.

Zenon Zawada: It’s rather common for politicians in developing democracies to appoint
judges loyal to their interests. What’s interesting about Leshchenko’s claims
is that the Poroshenko administration is preparing for the possibility that he
could lose his re-election campaign. Instead, we are confident that Poroshenko
will not allow a scenario in which another candidate is declared the winner,
particularly since his opponents are fierce rivals that could seek revenge. We
believe he can resort to extreme measures to avoid that scenario including
finding pretexts to postpone the elections indefinitely, manipulating the vote
process or delaying the establishing of results indefinitely. So we see this
alleged attempt to appoint loyal judges more as banal corruption rather than
preparing for an election loss.