Alexander Gorobets: Court decision on the rehabilitation of former Communist Party of Ukraine caused a stormy reaction

PRAVDA.Ru has already reported that the Constitutional Court of Kiev rehabilitated Ukraine’s Communist Party and declared non-constitutional the decisions of the Ukrainian Supreme Rada “On activity suspension for Ukraine’s Communist Party” of August 26, 1991 and “On prohibition of the Ukrainian Communist Party’s activity” of August 30, 1991. Ukraine’s Communist Party was registered on July 22, 1991. It is not a successor to the Communist Party prohibited in 1991, which is why it has no rights to the prohibited party’s property. The court decision may not be appealed against.

The court's decision caused a stormy reaction in political circles, in the left wing, first of all. The leader of the present Ukrainian Communist Party, Pyotr Simonenko, said that thousands of party members who did not want the Communist Party to be held responsible for the coup in 1991 had been waiting for such a decision. He also said that the court decisions the Constitutional Court admitted the violation of human rights by the decrees of the Supreme Rada issued in 1991. The rights were provided by the constitution of the Soviet republic of Ukraine and the Ukrainian constitution adopted in 1996.

The opinion of Viktor Skomorokha, the chairman of Ukraine’s Constitutional Court, was rather unexpected. He was one of the five judges who voted against the decision. He thinks that the court decision contradicts the constitution of Ukraine and was beyond the court’s authority. That is why the court was to have stopped the criminal proceedings. According to Viktor Skomorokha, this was the responsibility of the legislative body. He also stresses in the statement that an analysis of Ukraine’s legislation has revealed the lack of legal fundamentals and departments (except for the Supreme Rada of the Soviet republic of Ukraine) for passing the decrees of 1991. Moreover, by the moment of the decrees’ passing in 1991, the judicial order for the liquidation of political parties was invalid in Ukraine. That is why there were no legal grounds for the reference to the court.

As for the Rada’s decisions, they are not standard acts and can not be considered by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine.

Viktor Skomorokha also considers the court’s opinion on the registration of Ukraine’s Communist Party on July 22, 1991 “as a newly created party” to be groundless. Nothing was written about this on the party’s registration certificate.

Thus, Viktor Skomorokha thinks that the court exceeded the limits of the investigation's purpose and the declared decrees regarding the party’s property are non-constitutional despite the fact that a part of the property belonged to the state and by the moment of the decree’s passing, the Communist Party already disposed of the property. In a word, the chairman of the Constitutional Court supposes that if the human rights of thousands of the Ukrainians have been violated, the decision is not to be cancelled at all. He allows anarchy to triumph. It is a rather peculiar point of view.

One of the leaders of the Social Democratic party of Ukraine, Alexander Zinchenko, says that it is important now to realize that the court decision “will not affect the pre-election campaign in the present or the future. It only demonstrates the fact that Ukraine still has its communist past.”

In Zinchenko’s words, today’s Communist Party has nothing to do with the Soviet Communist Party. Plans for the future are to be worked out considering the fact that the majority of the past was stated wrongly. Mr.Zinchenko also says that the decision of the Constitutional Court is aimed at unification and not separation.

Alexander Gorobets PRAVDA.Ru Kiev Ukraine

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/01/03/35310.html