October 30, 2020

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Critical blow to anti-corruption agency

Ukraine’s Constitutional Court has stripped the country’s anti-corruption agency of some of its critical powers. The high court’s ruling published on October 28 declared it unconstitutional to hold officials criminally liable for intentionally providing false information on asset declarations. It also struck down several powers of the National Agency for Preventing Corruption (NAZK). The court decision may impact lending from the International Monetary Fund and threaten visa liberalization with the European Union. Anti-corruption campaigners said the ruling undermines Ukraine’s battle against graft. “The decision of the Constitutional Court will lead to a significant rollback in Ukraine’s anti-corruption reform,” watchdog Transparency International Ukraine’s Executive Director Andrii Borovyk said in a statement. “These legislative provisions were the cornerstones of the anti-corruption system, while corruption has been recognized as one of the threats to the national security.” The court ruled unconstitutional NAZK’s powers to verify asset declarations and monitor officials’ lifestyles for signs of corruption. Free public access to officials’ declarations was also made illegal, as were electronic declarations meant to increase transparency. Among other things, it also deprived the NAZK of the right to access registers, draft reports on violations, and conduct anti-corruption inspections in government agencies. The decision cannot be appealed. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine would continue to fight corruption. He also suggested he would take legislative action to restore the electronic declaration system and hold those who intentionally violate rules to account. “Ukrainian officials and deputies will continue to declare their property and income, and anti-corruption bodies will have the necessary powers to inspect them and bring violators to justice,” he said in a statement. The ruling could impact reforms required under a $5 billion International Monetary Fund deal Mr. Zelenskyy’s administration secured in June to fight a sharp economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic. But the IMF has held back tranches due to concerns over Ukraine’s performance in tackling corruption and implementing reforms. Visa liberalization with the EU is also contingent on Ukraine fighting endemic corruption. The court ruling is also controversial because four judges are under investigation by the NAZK for failing to properly declare assets in their declarations. The four judges did not recuse themselves from the case, despite calls to do so from the government and anti-corruption campaigners. (RFE/RL, with reporting by the Kyiv Post, Reuters and RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)

 

Monitors: vote was generally transparent

International observers say local elections in Ukraine, in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Servant Of The People party appear to have suffered a blow, were “well-organized and transparent,” but cite concerns such as “widespread” allegations of vote-buying and lack of objectivity in the domestic media. “In the limited number of polling stations visited, the voting process was generally calm, well-organized and transparent,” observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) said in a statement on October 26, adding that “party observers interfered with or participated in the [vote] counting process in several cases.” The mission, which had 66 observers across Ukraine, said candidates “were able to campaign freely,” but “cases of abuse of state resources and of office” to unfairly promote certain candidates, as well as “widespread allegations of vote-buying” were of concern. Voters were also hindered from making an informed choice on which candidates to vote for due to a lack of “unbiased and balanced coverage” in the media and “a high volume of unmarked promotional materials in broadcast media,” the observers said. The elections were considered historic because they were the first held under a new electoral code that decentralizes power from Kyiv to local governing bodies. Exit polls conducted by several groups from the October 25 elections showed that Mr. Zelenskyy’s pro-Moscow and pro-Western rivals leading in the capital, Kyiv, and the majority of major cities across the country. The Servant of the People party, which backs Mr. Zelenskyy, lost seven of nine major Ukrainian cities, including his hometown and Kyiv, where Mayor Vitali Klitschko, leader of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform party, leads in the poll with almost 50 percent of the votes, according to the exit polls. If they hold, the results would be a sharp blow to Mr. Zelenskyy, whose popularity has suffered in the year and a half since he came unexpectedly to power. “[It] is a catastrophe for a party which won 56 percent of seats in the national parliament just over a year ago. This is terrible indeed – and undermines their position in the Rada,” said Alex Kokcharov, a country risk analyst who follows Ukraine. Recent public opinion polls show that about 70 percent of Ukrainians believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, while Mr. Zelenskyy’s personal approval rating has dipped below 50 percent. Exit polls showed that incumbent mayors of the major cities holding elections – Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Lviv – should retain their seats, although some races could go to a second round of voting. None of these incumbents is a member of Servant of the People, and all of them oppose Mr. Zelenskyy. The OPORA civic group, which had observers in all regions of Ukraine, said on October 26 that, in general, the elections had been held without violations and in accordance with the election law. The Central Election Commission (CEC) said that the most widespread violation was the continuation of campaigning on election day. The violations were not severe enough to significantly distort the results, the CEC said. According to the CEC, the turnout was 37 percent. Final results of the local elections in Ukraine will be summed up in three to five days. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)

 

Zelenskyy congratulates Ukrainians

On October 26, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a statement congratulating Ukrainians for participating in the nationwide local elections on October 25. “We state that the election campaign, the voting process and the election process, in general, met the highest democratic standards and current legislation. All political forces – participants in the election process, as well as candidates – had a full range of opportunities to communicate their position to voters,” Mr. Zelenskyy’s statement said. He added that “the key achievement today is that Ukrainians have elected their representatives to local governments.” Ukraine’s electoral reforms have been lauded as a significant step away from the top-down administration the country inherited from the Soviet Union, a system that has remained largely unchanged over almost three decades of independence. Voting was not held in the Black Sea region of Crimea, which was forcibly annexed by Russia in 2014, and in parts of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions where Russia-backed “separatist” formations are fighting against Kyiv. In his October 26 statement, President Zelenskyy vowed to “return the constitutional order to all the districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions” and Crimea. (RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service)

 

Hungary reacts to Ukraine’s entry ban

Hungarian Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Szijjarto has called “pathetic and nonsense” Ukraine’s decision to bar the entry of two Hungarian government officials over what Kyiv said was meddling in local elections. In a video message on his Facebook page, Mr. Szijjarto said Budapest had not received formal notice of the Ukrainian ban. Although results of the elections have yet to be announced, Mr. Szijjarto welcomed what is expected to be the victory of Hungarian candidates in some local areas. He said Ukraine had taken “unfriendly steps” toward Hungary by summoning the Hungarian ambassador and deciding to refuse entry for the two Hungarian officials. “Unfortunately, with this decision, the Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Ministry has sent only one message: Ukraine is willing to give up on continuing its previous efforts toward European and Euro-Atlantic integration,” Mr. Szijjarto said. Hungary has repeatedly hinted at blocking Ukraine’s membership in NATO over what Budapest said were limits on the rights of the 150,000-strong ethnic Hungarian minority to use its language after Ukraine passed a law in 2017 restricting the use of minority languages in schools. Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement on October 26 that it had handed the Hungarian envoy to Kyiv a note of protest for what it described as political agitation by Hungarian officials in favor of a party that ran in the October 25 local elections in Ukraine. Hungarian officials had called on Ukrainians living in the region bordering Hungary to vote for the Party of Hungarians, the statement said, saying their actions violated Ukrainian legislation. “The ministry at once called on the Hungarian side to respect the law of Ukraine and not take steps that indicate direct interference in the domestic affairs of Ukraine and do not correspond to the good-neighborly character of Ukrainian-Hungarian relations,” the statement said. Later on October 26, Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba told Interfax news agency that Ukraine had banned entry to two Hungarian officials because of the incident. “Two high-ranking Hungarians, who resorted to direct agitation in the Zakarpattia region during this election campaign, are already banned from entering Ukraine. One of them is a state secretary in the chancellery of the prime minister of Hungary,” Mr. Kuleba told Interfax, without naming the officials. He added that Kyiv was considering imposing entry bans for several other Hungarians for actively interfering in internal affairs during the campaign. “Our partners will be informed in detail shortly about Hungarian interference in our elections, we have already informed the OSCE [Organization For Security and Cooperation in Europe] election-monitoring mission accordingly,” Mr. Kuleba said. (RFE/RL, with reporting by Reuters and Interfax)

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