KIEV, Sept. 21 – The Constitutional Court on Thursday will start deliberations on whether the powers of President Viktor Yanukovych be dramatically increased by canceling constitutional amendments approved back in December 2004, a newspaper reported.

Anatoliy Holovin, the head of the court, issued an ordered to begin the deliberation, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia newspaper reported Tuesday.

The deliberations were scheduled after the court was recently reshuffled by massively replacing judges opposing Yanuklovych’s political initiatives with those that are loyal to him.

The reshuffle signals the court may be preparing to issue a ruling canceling the amendments, a move that may significantly increase the powers of the president.

“The authorities have turned the Constitutional Court into an entity that can be called the Donetsk Constitutional Court,” former President Viktor Yushchenko’s party, Our Ukraine, said in a statement.

Yanukovych has repeatedly said that the constitution must be amended, while his aides have said the powers of the president must be increased.

Four judges, mostly from regions strongly favoring Yanukovych, were nominated and appointed to the Constitutional Court earlier this month.

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

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

Serhiychuk was the judge as the High Administration Court.

Ivan Dombrovskiy, Yaroslava Machuzhak, Anatoliy Didkovskiy and Viacheslav Dzhun, the judges that are known to have opposing Yanukovych’s policy initiatives, resigned from the Constitutional Court earlier this month.

“This is obvious that the four judges resigned under pressure from the authorities and more cooperative judges have been quickly elected to replace them,” Our Ukraine said.

The reshuffle makes the 18-strong court almost completely dominated by Yanukovych’s allies ahead of the ruling over the presidential powers.

Taras Chornovil, a lawmaker and a former ally of Yanukovych, said the reshuffle will probably make the court “more and more manipulated.”

Almost the entire pro-Yanukovych 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, then the opposition leader and a pro-Western figure.

The amendments, which came into force on January 1, 2006, reduced powers of the president by allowing the coalition – not the president - to nominate the prime minister and most of ministers.

The amendments 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)