People’s Front asks Poroshenko not to listen to human rights defenders

The People’s Front political faction urges President Petro Poroshenko to refrain from changing the recently adopted Law on the Constitutional Court of Ukraine regarding the procedure for electing the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights.

As stated in the statement of posted on the faction’s website.

“The People’s Front faction appeals to the President of Ukraine not to succumb to the pressure and provocations of political forces that are trying to revise the law of Ukraine “On the Constitutional Court of Ukraine”, which was recently adopted by the Parliament”, – said in the statement.

The People’s Front is convinced that the president is being pressured to “change the law contrary to common sense and introduce norms that contradict the proven legal practice and the decision of the Constitutional Court that was adopted earlier”

The authors of the statement note that “the amendment in the norm of election of an Ombudsman to an open voting that was adopted during the sessional meeting is in line, since in 2012 the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, while relying on Article 84 of the Constitution of Ukraine, declared the provisions of the Regulations, which provided secret voting by ballot, as unconstitutional”.

“Therefore, attempts to amend the current law automatically generate a legal conflict”, – the People’s Front noted.

The political faction also indicates that it is the open voting for the Ombudsman’s candidacy that guarantees the responsibility of each deputy and removes possible corruption interests that may arise in case of secret voting procedure, as well as provides voters with an opportunity to analyze the activities of both their deputies and the Parliament as a whole.

The People’s Front reminded that the Parliament uses the open voting for electing the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, the Prime Minister of Ukraine, the Chairman of the Security Service, the General Prosecutor, and so on, but, obscurely, the election of the Ombudsman is taken out of the brackets of absolutely normal practice.

As a reminder, human rights defenders, including the Amnesty International, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, the Human Rights Information Centre and others, have signed an appeal addressed to Poroshenko calling not to sign not to sign the Law on the Constitutional Court, which provides for an open vote procedure for the Ombudsman’s candidacy, though 227 deputies have supported the procedure of secret voting for the election of the Ombudsman.

Authors of the statement note that the procedure for electing the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights should not be considered as the part of the draft law on the Constitutional Court of Ukraine at all. However, it was considered and on July 13, 2017, 227 deputies have voted for the amendment, which provided for a secret voting procedure.

“Despite the fact that the number of the amendment was wrongly named, the text of the verbatim clearly stated the concrete essence of this proposal. 227 people’s deputies supported it during the vote”, – noted the human rights defenders.

According to the authors of the appeal, immediately after the consideration of this agenda item, information on the voting results was displayed on the official website of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine as a vote for a proposal to the bill. But in a few minutes it was changed to another, incorrect correction, which does not correspond to the essence of the proposed proposal and a vote on this proposal was never held.

On July 25, human rights defenders have conducted a flashmob #stop6427d demanding from the President not to sign a falsified law.

Human rights defenders demanded to bring the final text of the adopted law in line with the results of the vote and called on the international organizations to take control of this situation in order to prevent politicization of the national human rights institution.

On July 31, President Poroshenko signed the law in the wording provided by the Parliament, but promised to submit proposals to the Parliament on changes to the legislation on the Ombudsman.