“Transitional” Prosecutor General
“He promised to introduce various tools for control over the Prosecutor General’s Office and employ the young. One month will be enough to understand whether he really fulfills his promises”
The Verkhovna Rada accepted the resignation of Prosecutor General Vitalii Yarema with 291 votes. His companions and assistance Oleh Zalisko, Oleh Bachun, and Anatolii Danylenko also resigned from high positions at the Prosecutor General’s Office. It should be emphasized that the resignation took place virtually on the eve of the first anniversary of mass shootings on Maidan on February 20. Yarema was criticized the most for absence of results in the investigation of the Yanukovych regime’s crimes. However, will the replacement of people, but not approaches, solve the problem with the law-enforcement bodies?
On Tuesday, the parliament also supported the president’s proposal on appointing Viktor Shokin Prosecutor General. A total of 318 MPs voted for. Shokin was not supported by the Self Reliance and the Radical Party. However, even the Opposition Bloc voted for. “The president has made another staff mistake! He is reducing his chance to be remembered in history to zero! The vote for Shokin is very telling: we are making the same mistake that we made in 2005! The same actors perform the same role of betraying the country! The Opposition Bloc, whose members Shokin promises to put to jail, Svoboda (perhaps, they are afraid of investigations on Ukrspyrt and forest industry), and a part of coalition MPs supported it! A new coalition designed to bring the country to a collapse was formed,” said a member of Self Reliance Hanna Hopko commenting on the vote.
Let us note that until the vote itself, there was no united position on the new Prosecutor General not only within the coalition, but also within separate factions.
Self Reliance MP Yehor Soboliev, who initiated the collection of signatures for Yarema’s resignation, said in his commentary to The Day: “It is important to choose the prosecutor general right and to do it on a competitive basis. Viktor Shokin is definitely a bad choice, because he is a person of the system, who grew up with the existing Prosecutor General’s Office with all its vices. A new prosecutor general must be a truly new person and hate the current system with its corruption.”
Member of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc Serhii Aleksieiev commented on the appointment of the new head of the Prosecutor General’s Office in the following way: “A war is raging, and the country cannot live without a prosecutor general even for an hour, that is why a decision must be made quickly. As for the competitive basis of the prosecutor’s appointment, I find it a very reasonable suggestion, however, it can be done later, if the appointed person is not able to fulfill their duties. But this requires certain changes in the legislation.”
During his seven months in office, Yarema failed to live up to society’s expectations in investigating the crimes of the previous regime. At the moment of his appointment as the head of the Prosecutor General’s Office, Petro Poroshenko said: “The role of the Prosecutor General’s Office in the battle against corruption is crucial. By way of instruction, I will quote the Singapore wonder’s author Lee Kuan Yew: ‘How to start fighting corruption? Start with putting three of your friends to jail. You definitely know what for, they know what for, and the people will believe you.’” However, the Ukrainian society saw neither high-profile trials of murderers of the Maidan protesters, nor arrests of corrupt officials, nor the “three imprisoned friends.” A drastic change of the internal staff policy of the Prosecutor General’s Office did not take place either. Suffice it to say that in March the EU may lift sanctions off the former fugitive officials of Yanukovych’s time.
“Only 6 prosecutors out of 21 were replaced in Donetsk oblast, and the rest, who were appointed during Pshonka’s time in office, continued working. I know facts when they received the status of ATO participant,” tells MP from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc Dmytro Lubinets to The Day. “And I am not prepared to say whether Shokin will be better than Yarema.” According to Lubinets, when a person is appointed to a post, they must be given specific tasks with deadlines, and the credit of trust depends on the completion of the tasks. “I would charge the new Prosecutor General with a two-month task: to investigate all high-profile cases and first of all, the shooting of people on Maidan, conform all procedural matters related to Yanukovych and his entourage, and implement an appropriate staff policy,” the MP says.
“A prosecutor general who will put 3 of his friends to jail is needed, but society already wants 10 of them to be imprisoned,” member of Batkivshchyna faction Oleksii Riabchyn says in a commentary to The Day. “We see the deterioration of the economic state of the country, corruption persists, and people want to change it all promptly and legally. This is the point of all future reforms.” However, according to the MP, he is not sure that Shokin is the person capable of implementing these changes: “He promised to introduce various tools for control over the Prosecutor General’s Office and employ the young. I think one month will be enough to understand whether he really fulfills his promises. In the future, I find it necessary to amend the legislation in a fashion that would allow open competition for all crucial posts, such as the heads of the Prosecutor General’s Office, Anti-Monopoly Committee, Accounting Chamber, National Commission for State Energy Regulation, etc.,” says Riabchyn.
