Ukraine’s Supreme Court did not allow Nikolay Melnichenko to participate in the parliamentary elections

Ukraine’s Supreme Court continued pending the case connected with the appeal from Ukraine’s Social party against the actions of the Central Electoral Committee, which refused to register ex-mayor of the state security Nikolay Melnichenko as the candidate for the position of a deputy in the parliament. The verdict of the superior court was final and could not be appealed: the actions of the Central Electoral Committee are right.

The court explained its decision with the discrepancy of the documents, submitted to the Central Electoral Committee to register Melnichenko pursuant to article 8 of Ukraine’s law “On the elections of the people’s deputies.” This article regulated a candidacy’s place of living.

Commenting on such decision of the Supreme Court, the leader of Ukraine’s Social party, Alexander Moroz said: “Unfortunately, there is no judicial branch of power in Ukraine, since there is not legal, but the political argumentation in the decision of the Supreme Court.”

Moroz added, that “it would be strange, if the system of the power, which was sick with the diseases of the political and criminal character, would be healthy to a certain extent. We can notice that both with the legislative and especially with the executive power, since they generate criminality and corruption in Ukraine,” – Moroz said. He also pointed out that the political organizations would have to do a lot in order to change the situation for the better.

As the leader of the Social party stated, the Supreme Court “repeated the nonsense, which was presented to it by the Central Electoral Committee, and did not use any arguments, having messed up with the notions of place of living and place of temporal staying.”

Alexander Moroz said that the decision of the Supreme Court was made after the authenticity of the audio tapes, made by Nikolay Melnichenko had been proved (the tapes contain the discreditable material against the Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma). “This means that all those people, who took part in the consideration of this issue before its pending at court, are responsible for the crimes in Ukraine, that is why they are afraid, lest a material witness should appear. So they made a wrong decision so as to protect themselves, at least for a certain period of time,” – Moroz said.

He added that his party was ready for the struggle and they were going to be persistent in it, using the constitutional methods.” The analysis of the decision of the Supreme Court will be handed over to the representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and other European institutions, so that they could give the general estimation to the situation in Ukraine.

It should be also mentioned here that a judge of the Supreme Court, Andrey Gnatenko was considering the issue. The Ukrainian opposition noticed that Gnatenko was supposed to make a decision on such a relevant issue, although he had become a judge of the Supreme Court only at the end of the last year: he had neither authority, nor a point of view of his own. Therefore, he was totally dependent on the administration of the superior court, when it came to the final verdict.

Criticizing such decision of the court, the socialists referred to the example of Ukraine’s deputy, Viktor Zherditsky. He was caught red-handed with DM 50 million money laundering in Germany; he has been under arrest in Germany for over a year, but went through the registration process at the Central Electoral Committee without any troubles.

Alexander Gorobets PRAVDA.Ru Kiev, Ukraine

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov