A New Civic Initiative Started in Ukraine to Filter the Judiciary

June 11, 2016

Civic Movement CHESNO, in its campaign “CHESNO. Filter the Judiciary!”, will collect information about 7,606 Ukrainian judges, who work in 765 courts of all levels: from their careers to property declarations, as well as an assessment of their integrity based on criteria, that society has deemed important. This was stated during the open forum “CHESNO. Filter the Judiciary: Through Cleaning to Fair Justice” by co-chair of the board of the Reanimation Package of Reforms, co-founder of Civic Movement “CHESNO”, and director of the Center for Democracy and Rule of Law Taras Shevchenko.

Opening remarks were expressed by the Ambassador of Sweden to Ukraine, H.E. Andreas von BECKERATH.

Participants of the discussion panel included:

  • Oksana SYROID, Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine
  • Pavlo PETRENKO, Minister of Justice of Ukraine
  • Yehor SOBOLIEV, Chairman of VRU Committee on Preventing and Combatting Corruption
  • Kostyantyn KRASOVSKY, Head of the Department for Legal Policy of the Administration of the President of Ukraine
  • Mykhailo MAKARCHUK, Member of the High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine
  • Oleksandr SASEVYCH, Member of the Council of Judges of Ukraine, Judge of the District Administrative Court of Lviv
  • Taras SHEVCHENKO, Director of the Centre for Democracy and Rule of Law
  • Discussion panel:
  • Mykhailo ZHERNAKOV, senior expert from the Group on Reform of the Judiciary, Reanimation Package of Reforms
  • Vitaliy SHABUNIN, Chairman of the Board of the Anti-Corruption Action Centre
  • Oleh RYBACHUK, Chairman and co-founder of Centre UA
  • Roman MASELKO, AutoMaidan advocate,
  • experts and investigative journalists.

 

The goal of the campaign is to activate the public to cleanse the ranks of the judiciary of dishonest judges and support fair justice in Ukraine.

The CHESNO movement plans to: publish it in personal profiles of judges on the CHESNO site (chesnosud.org); create an interactive map of the judicial system of Ukraine; closely monitor the selection of judges of the Supreme Court and the evaluation of judges by the High Qualification Commission of Judges; prevent the permanent appointments of several hundreds of judges, which are pending a vote in the Verkhovna Rada; initiate disciplinary accountability and punishment for judges, who violate the law; and monitor the judicial processes of dishonest judges. 

To filter the judiciary Civic Movement CHESNO will use the following criteria:

  • involvement in corruption;
  • transparency of finances and assets;
  • avoidance of lustration;
  • involvement in the violation of human rights and freedom;
  • decisions made in violation of oath;
  • unethical behavior;
  • political, commercial, and familial connections of judges.

 

According to the result of the last national public opinion poll (May 2016), the Razumkov Center reports that only 10 % of citizens trust the judiciary, and the level of distrust is 83 %. The level of trust in the judicial branch is the lowest among the branches of power across all regions of Ukraine (distrust of the President of Ukraine was 60%, the Cabinet of Ministers – 74%, and the Verkhovna Rada – 80%).

«CHESNO: Filter the Judiciary” is a campaign to filter the judiciary of dishonest judges, which was formed by the Center for Democracy and Rule of Law, Center UA, the Civic Lustration Committee, experts from the judicial reform group of RPR, Maidan advocates, investigative journalists, and civic activists.