KIEV, Feb. 21 – President Viktor Yanukovych on Monday created a panel of legal experts and dignitaries to draft new constitutional amendments that may be introduced just before the next presidential election.

The panel, called the Constitutional Assembly, is supposed to debate and draft the amendments that Yanukovych will submit to Parliament for approval before they are approved at a special referendum.

The move comes less than five months after the constitution was changed – and Yanukovych’s powers increased dramatically - overnight by a controversial ruling of the Constitutional Court.

The change, which canceled the 2004 constitutional amendments, effectively turned Ukraine into a country run by the president, scrapping an earlier system when the country had been essentially run by a coalition of political parties in Parliament.

The change, which was carried out after a massive reshuffle of judges at the Constitutional Court, had been attacked by opposition groups as “illegal usurpation of power.” It has also been cautiously received by international leaders, triggering questions over legitimacy of the Ukrainian authorities that may have triggered the pressure to approve the new amendments in a legal way.

“We have to agree that the current constitution does not correspond to the interests of the Ukrainian people,” Leonid Kravchuk, a former president, said in an interview with ICTV on Monday.

Kravchuk will be one of the members of the Constitutional Assembly, which will also include other dignitaries, such as Vasyl Malyarenko, a former head of the Supreme Court, Leonid Huberskiy, rector of the Shevchenko University, and other legal experts.

This is a turnaround for Kravchuk, who at the presidential election in February 2010 has supported Yanukovych’s opponent, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Kravchuk also criticized Yanukovych’s first political initiatives, including his increasing pressure on opposition politicians.

Kravchuk said that drafting of the amendments may take up to 2.5 years, and will after that may be submitted by Yanukovych for approval by Parliament. After that, the amendments must be approved by the people at the referendum, which means they are unlikely be introduced before the next presidential election in March 2015.

Yanukovych provided little indication to what the new amendments should focus on, except that they should “improve the confidence of the people in the constitution.”

Yanukovych’s predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko, has been also trying to amend the constitution and had tried to do so through the creation of the National Constitutional Council, a panel that also includes dignitaries.

However, his attempts have been essentially torpedoed by Yanukovych and by Tymoshenko as both had refused to nominate their representatives to the council.

Yushchenko’s amendments called for creating a second chamber of Parliament, and also granting the president power to veto the government’s decisions on foreign policy, defense and security matters. (tl/ez)