Yellow Pora blacklist targets regional officials (07/24/05)

Yellow Pora blacklist targets regional officials

by Yana Sedova
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Yellow (Zhovta) Pora has released a second blacklist that focuses on regional politicians, rectors and businessmen that continue to hold power in Ukraine.

At a July 18 press conference, Zhovta Pora's political council announced the new blacklist and said lawbreakers must go to jail if justice is to prevail.

The regional list serves to update the political party's first blacklist released in April, with the goal of continuously adding names whenever another case of corruption emerges.

"We continue the process of purifying Ukrainian society," said Yaroslav Poharskyi, a member of Zhovta Pora's political council. "Our mission is to hold the Ukrainian government responsible for its activity."

The main goal of the regional blacklist is to gather reliable information about illegal acts of officials representing all branches of local government. Zhovta Pora claims that it doesn't want to hunt anybody, but considers this step "a road sign for law-enforcement bodies."

The first blacklist included 20 well-known political figures and businessmen of Ukraine. Many of them were implicated in violations during the presidential elections last year.

Andrii Yusov, a Zhovta Pora political council member, claimed that 12 people on the list are now on trial and some have already left their positions, including Ruslan Bodelan, the former mayor of Odesa.

On Pora's website, there is an application with the proposal, "Add your candidate to the blacklist."

Any citizen or organization can ask Zhovta Pora for help in case their rights are violated. An appeal should contain the relevant articles of the Constitution, or those laws broken, as well as any facts in the matter.

"We do not work with anonymous letters," Mr. Yusov said. "Only if we can find out the names of accusers will we accept an appeal."

Next, a special commission of legal experts analyzes the set of facts.

"We cooperate with law-enforcement organizations and have enough lawyers and economists to offer expertise in every single case," said Mykhailo Pushkarenko, the head of the project. "The 15 members of the political council vote whether to put a lawbreaker on the list or not."

Pora rejects accusations that it is chasing allies of the former government or trying to usurp the role of law-enforcement authorities.

"Our opponents and people recorded on the list continually charge that our blacklist is a tool for political repression," Mr.Yusov said. "But none of them ever sued us. So these people are afraid of a frank public and legal dialogue."

Among those listed are government officials, including those who held or hold posts in the Cabinet of Ministers, among them the current justice minister, Roman Zvarych.

Exactly 51 officials and businessmen are on the updated blacklist, which can be viewed at www.pora.org.ua. Besides names and posts, the list contains a general entry about the alleged crime. However, the formula is the same with almost every entry - "abuse of power."

Zhovta Pora's leaders asserted its "uncompromising position" concerning corrupt former and current officials, irrespective of their party affiliation or relations with new government.

"The representatives of the new government conduct themselves in the same way as their predecessors," Mr. Yusov said, without mentioning any particular name. "They are often guilty of the same crimes."

Among the most recognizable names already blacklisted in April are Serhii Kivalov, the former chair of the Central Election Committee; Viktor Skopenko, the rector of the Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv; Hennadii Vasyliev, the former procurator general; Vasyl Kremen, the former minister of education; Viktor Medvedchuk, the former chair of the President's Administration; and Ihor Bakai, the former chair of the State Office of Presidential Administrative Affairs, who fled to Russia (Mr. Bakai was detained there but released within several hours).

Zhovta Pora's activists want to hand the blacklist to President Viktor Yushchenko in August and expect he will react by fulfilling his presidential duty as guarantor of the Constitution and Ukraine's laws.

The political party insists that Mr. Yushchenko keep the promises he gave on the "maidan" (Independence Square) and if he fails to keep them by a September deadline, the Zhovta Pora activists promised to use more assertive forms of protest, such as strikes and tent cities.

"We want the procurator general [Sviatoslav Piskun], the Security Service of Ukraine chief [Oleksander Turchynov] and the minister of internal affairs [Yurii Lutsenko] to start their day looking through our blacklist," Mr. Poharskyi said.

However, Mr. Lutsenko said that his Internal Affairs Ministry's blacklists are even lengthier than that of Zhovta Pora.

"We already brought legal action against many blacklisted people," Mr. Lutsenko said. "Some have been prosecuted. So far, Pora lags behind."

Zhovta Pora is a registered political party that split from Chorna Pora, which wanted to remain a political, grassroots organization.

After declaring itself a political party, Zhovta Pora fought with the Justice Ministry to register itself in time for the March 2006 parliamentary elections.

Minister Zvarych declined to register Pora because he claimed the group had listed fictitious names of party members, addresses and even a made-up village.

In turn, Zhovta Pora accused Mr. Zvarych of playing politics via his denial with the purpose of limiting parties that could siphon votes away from the Our Ukraine People's Union in the 2006 elections.

On June 27 the Pechersk City Court in Kyiv ruled that the Justice Ministry must register Zhovta Pora as a political party with the date of registration being before March 26, 2005, thus making the party eligible to run in the March 2006 elections.

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