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Four new judges pack Constitutional Court
Journal Staff Report

KIEV, Sept. 16 – Four judges, mostly from regions strongly favoring President Viktor Yanukovych, were elected for nomination to the Constitutional Court by a panel of judges on Thursday.

The judges--Mykhaylo Zaporozhets, Natalia Shaptal, Oleh Serhiychuk and Mykhaylo Hultay--will replace judges who resigned from the court earlier this month.

The massive reshuffle comes as the court is preparing to issue a ruling on whether powers of Yanukovych must be dramatically increased by canceling 2004 constitutional amendments.

The new judges will be officially appointed to the Constitutional Court after they will are sworn in at a session of Parliament. This will increase the number of judges in the court to 18.

Before the judges were elected, Yanukovych on Thursday addressed the panel calling for a comprehensive court system overhaul that may require amending the constitution.

“It is urgent now to conduct reform of the criminal justice,” Yanukovych said.

“Creation of the unified computerized system for all courts is a sharp problem of our time,” Yanukovych said. “I don’t rule out that in order to complete the reform respective amendments to the constitution will be submitted by me.”

Shaptala is the judge from the administrative court of appeals in the Donetsk region, while Zaporozhets is the judge as the court of appeals in Luhansk region and Hultay is the judge at the court of appeals in Kharkiv region. All these regions are Yanukovych’s political strongholds.

Serhiychuk is the judge as the High Administration Court.

Four judges resigned the Constitutional Court earlier this month raising questions whether they had faced any pressure from the authorities.

Ivan Dombrovskiy, Yaroslava Machuzhak, Anatoliy Didkovskiy and Viacheslav Dzhun were known fr opposing Yanukovych’s policy initiatives.

The appointment of new judges to the Constitutional Court will make the court almost completely dominated by Yanukovych’s allies, and come as the court is about to rule whether his powers must be increased.

“There is a major suspicion that the court will be more and more manipulated,” Taras Chornovil, a lawmaker and a former ally of Yanukovych, told Channel 5 television.

Almost the entire governing coalition in Parliament signed a petition earlier this year asking the Constitutional Court to explain whether the 2004 constitutional amendments were legal.

Should the court rule on rejecting the amendments, Yanukovych may receive huge powers, such as the ability to fire the prime minister and the entire government, which had been enjoyed by President Leonid Kuchma in 1996-2004.

The petition came after Yanukovych’s attempts to increase his powers through a referendum had failed after many coalition members had apparently decided to quietly sabotage it.

The amendments were approved on December 8, 2004 in the middle of the Orange Revolution, as Kuchma has been seeking to reduce powers of the next president, who was likely to be Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader and a pro-Western figure.

The amendments, which had come into force on January 1, 2006, reduced powers of the president to fire the prime minister and the government, allowing Parliamentary groups to nominate the prime minister and ministers.

The amendments have weakened Yushchenko’s powers significantly and created permanent tensions between the presidential administration and the Cabinet of Ministers, often leading to constitutional crises over the past four years. (tl/ez)




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