Friday, April 12, 2013

Ukraine's legal system completely discredited


Today Ukraine's Higher Administrative court deemed the hijacked 4th April parliamentary session which was held in a small cinema hall close to the main parliament building, to be legitimate. Opposition MP's had not been informed of the move from the normal parliamentary plenum chamber, and were brusquely refused access when they arrived..

The court claims a quorum i.e. was assembled, and  244 deputies attended the session, even though the parliamentary administration has refused to provide copies of the register containing signatures of those allegedly present. [Probably because it would be a simple task to check if any of these 244 where elsewhere at the time.]

Normally after any voting in the parliamentary plenum chamber, a list of names - who voted in favour, or against, is always posted on the official parliamentary website. This information has not materialised for the 4th April session, denying the electorate the opportunity to check how their individual MP's voted on the bills 'passed'.

No-one even knows for sure how many hands were shown to be in favour of any motion - only pro-government members of the counting committee were present in the hall. Opposition members of the committee were refused admission - access for them was physically denied to them by PoR deputies - so how could these PoR deputies vote when they were patrolling the narrow corridors outside the hall?

How can such a country, where the legal system is such a joke, be admitted to any European democratic institutions?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ukraine has a long way to go before it should even be considered for EU membership. Even at an associate level

The first requirement should be that Ukraine adopt constitutional reform and the follow in the footsteps of other Eastern European States, by abandoning the presidential system and adopting a full Parliamentary system of governance based on European models of governance.