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309,000 join lawsuit against Yanukovych
Journal Staff Report

KIEV, Aug. 20 — More than 309,000 people have joined a class-action lawsuit against President Viktor Yanukovych over the past 30 days by signing petition seeking his removal from office through impeachment, opposition leaders said Monday.

The lawsuit, which will be filed within days to the High Administrative Court, seeks to punish Yanukovych for “usurpation of power” following controversial changes to the constitution in October 2010.

The changes reshaped political system in Ukraine by dramatically increasing presidential powers, including the power to dismiss the prime minister, to appoint and to dismiss ministers in the Cabinet.

Supporting the lawsuit is evidence submitted by a former judge of the Constitutional Court that claims the presidential administration has put pressure on judges at the court to force the changes through.

“We have the testimony from one of the judges at the Constitutional Court that pressure has been put on him during deliberations,” Arseniy Yatseniuk, the leader of the united opposition Batkivshchyna group, said. “This person is no longer the judge, but we’ve got the testimony.”

The changes made Yanukovych the dominant political authority in Ukraine. A separate judicial reform, drafted and launched by the presidential administration in 2010, had also allowed Yanukovych to de-facto increase his influence over courts and the country’s legal system.

This makes it extremely unlikely that the High Administrative Court would accept let alone support the lawsuit.

But the refusal to accept the lawsuit would open way for the opposition group to file the lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights, and to potentially fuel street protests.

“We realize that the Ukrainian courts are under control of the Yanukovych regime,” Yatseniuk said. “That’s why we are ready for the case at the European Court, and also for the street protests,” Yatseniuk said.

Meanwhile, Yanukovych loyalists dismissed merits of the lawsuit as purely political and probably aimed at energizing opposition supporters ahead of the October 28 parliamentary elections.

“The Yatseniuk lawsuit has nothing to do with law,” Volodymyr Oliynyk, a Regions Party lawmaker, said in a statement. “But this is a successful attempt to imitate a battle against the authorities and just another opportunity to get PR in the media.”

Oliynyk said Yatseniuk’s campaign has been “lacking logic.”

“On the one hand, they claim there no fair and just court system, but on the other hand they collect signatures under petition that will be submitted to the court,” Oliynyk said.

“This manipulation and legal swindling has nothing to do with law and constitution,” Oliynyk said. “It shows that the opposition has run out of ideas. Obviously, Arseniy Yatseniuk simply has nothing else to take to the voters.” (tl/ez)




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