JOHN MARONE, KYIV
UKRAINE’S PUBLIC ENEMIES
Under Ukraine’s last president, Leonid Kuchma, crime and punishment were pretty straight forward affairs.
If you were a poor slob caught near the scene of a crime, you would be quickly whisked off to a remand center and possibly tortured along the way.
Whether you were guilty or not, you stayed in that remand center with the faint hope of being pardoned or just let out.
Getting a fair trial was coincidental, and a prompt trial – a dream; however, the chance of getting someone else’s crimes hung on you was a very possible nightmare.
If, on the other hand, you were a political trouble maker – journalist, civic activist or politician – your stay in the remand center was usually brief and meant to embarrass you publicly or scare you into submission.
Current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was a good example of the latter type of Ukrainian prisoner and eventually capitalized on the experience to the benefit of her political career.
As for the railroaded poor slobs, only those few who had the misfortune of being accused of the murders of investigative journalists ever really became public figures.
Starting with the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko, punishment of crimes in Ukraine has lost most of its aura of sadistic repression, which however, may very well continue to thrive in the provinces.
In the capital, Kyiv, the interior ministers have looked less like hardened thugs and more like political idiots. They appeal to public understanding like true politicians, but aren’t very convincing. They are no longer feared for their clandestine cruelty, but rather mocked for their impotent antics.
Does anyone remember Socialist top-cop Vasyl Tsushko, a would-be revolutionary turned international malingerer? Couldn’t he come up with a better reason for fleeing the country than claiming he’d been poisoned? The funny part is that more dangerous characters than he felt no reason to explain their flights abroad and probably left with a lot more money in their suitcases.
Indeed, fleeing the country has become much more common under Mr. Yushchenko. The worst part, though, is that the suspects come back, often in righteous indignation toward Independent Ukraine’s most lenient of leaders.
The latest incident of a top Ukrainian politician fleeing the country involves hitherto little-know lawmaker Viktor Lozinsky of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s BYuT faction. Mr. Lozinsky stands accused of taking part in the shooting death of a Kirovograd man.
According to the accused, he and a former local prosecutor and police official were out for a ride last month when they encountered the man and demanded that he identify himself. Instead, according to Lozinsky, the man opened fire on them and somehow ended up dead himself.
Because Mr. Lozinsky is a “People’s Deputy”, he was not arrested, but allowed to flee the country. His fellow lawmakers ignored the president’s request that Lozinsky’s lawmaker immunity be annulled, instead only revoking his mandate.
Yushchenko was, of course, displeased, telling a press conference shortly thereafter: “In essence, the Verkhovna Rada has ignored its responsibilities by refusing to recognize the glaring fact that the people’s deputy is a suspect in a terrible murder.”
Apparently in political response, a completely bogus report about the president’s son allegedly being involved in a Kyiv shooting was soon carried by all the country’s main media. The message was clear: everything is interpreted in terms of political rivalry, in which the law is just one of many weapons to be used (or more accurately - abused).
In the heat of the ensuing polemics, once again the issue of cancelling lawmaker’s immunity from prosecution came up, and once again the issue was turned into a political football.
The Regions faction, aligned with neither the president nor BYuT, used the opportunity to demand that the budget be reviewed (!). Somewhere in the middle of the dog and pony act, Lozinsky’s representative declared he had no idea where his boss had gotten off to.
If at this point the reader is inclined to throw up his hands in disgust, stay tuned. Somewhere down the road, Mr. Lozinsky is bound to turn back up with a story as outrageous as his alibi. Expect something akin to: I was framed for political reasons, fled for my life, blah, blah, blah.
It’s happened before. Remember Volodymyr Shcherban, the governor of Sumy Region, who fled to the US to escape arrest at home, only to return as if nothing had happened?
Maybe the impudence of these fugitives is more telling of their defiance of Mr. Yushchenko than of the law per se.
In the case of Lozinsky, the president went so far as to publicly accuse Tymoshenko’s BYuT of engineering the flight. But in doing so, Mr. Yushchenko showed more interest in attacking a political rival than in seeking justice.
But let it not be said, though, that the guilty go completely unpunished in Ukraine. The local police official in the company of Mr. Lozinsky on the evening of the murder has been arrested - at least for now.
He may actually end up doing some time, as did top Donetsk Region official Borys Kolesnikov, following Yushchenko’s accession to the presidency. But, in the end, Mr. Kolesnikov was set free, leaving it open to interpretation as to whether he was guilty of anything in the first place.
The funny thing about lawlessness is that it equalizes the outlaw and the law-abiding. If there is no law, there can be no crime, and authority becomes the prerogatives of the rulers. Unlike Russia, Ukraine isn’t ruled by a single executive figure, but rather by a collection of officials with business interests. It is oligarchy on the verge of anarchy.
As in real anarchy, things sometimes get ugly, with top Ukrainian politicians occasionally murdered or forced to commit suicide. Whatever their crime might have been, one can be sure it was committed against their political or business partners rather than the people or state.
John Marone, a columnist of Eurasian Home website, Kyiv, Ukraine
July 14, 2009
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