Divided Verkhovna Rada fails to remove procurator general (02/25/01)

Divided Verkhovna Rada fails to remove procurator general

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Ukraine's Procurator General Mykhailo Potebenko easily survived a sustained effort to remove him from office on February 22, with five different motions of no confidence failing to receive majority approval from the Parliament.

As Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma had predicted earlier in the week, the political factions that have united in the Forum for National Salvation led the move to oust the country's chief prosecutor.

The badly divided Verkhovna Rada did not come close to the 226 votes needed to carry the motion on any one of the attempts. Motions introduced by the Batkivschyna, Left Center, National Rukh of Ukraine, Ukrainian National Rukh and Reforms-Congress factions each failed miserably. The most votes a motion mustered was 111.

The voting came a day after Mr. Potebenko ignored a request by the Verkhovna Rada that he appear to report on the workings of his government agency.

Mr. Potebenko was to have appeared before the national deputies three weeks ago, but his appearance was postponed after the procurator general took an unexpected two-week vacation. As the new date approached, Mr. Potebenko asserted in public statements that he had no responsibility to report to the Ukrainian Parliament.

"The procurator general is appointed and dismissed by the president rather than by the Verkhovna Rada," explained Mr. Potebenko in a February 19 letter addressed to the Parliament. Mr. Potebenko further claimed the Constitution makes no mention of the need for him to report.

That view was supported by President Kuchma, who said on February 20 that, while he positively views any effort at open communication between the executive and the legislative branches of government, he believes the invitation to Mr. Potebenko was merely a political move "to unbalance and instigate the situation."

"I am 100 percent confident that this is the main goal of the factions that have raised the issue," said Mr. Kuchma.

Mr. Potebenko increasingly has found himself at the center of the storm surrounding the missing Ukrainian journalist Heorhii Gongadze, whose body was found in a shallow grave near the town of Tarascha, located 75 miles outside of Kyiv, two months after he disappeared, without a trace.

In recent days Mr. Potebenko has seen demonstrations outside his office, some up to 1,000 strong, in protest of his decision to jail former Vice Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on charges of bribery, forgery, tax evasion and illegal smuggling. Demonstrators also accuse him of covering up and delaying the investigation surrounding the Tarascha body.

On February 21 the Procurator General's Office added a charge of grand theft of government property to the ever-growing list of counts against Ms. Tymoshenko.

It is the controversy over the Tarascha corpse, however, that has saddled Mr. Potebenko with the most criticism. The chief prosecutor continues to refuse to certify the body as that of the missing journalist because he claims that the 99.6 level of certainty of the DNA testing is not conclusive. He has also claimed that foot-dragging on the testing was the result of a failure by the journalist's mother, Lesia Gongadze, to give a blood sample, which she has denied vehemently.

Before the unsuccessful vote of no confidence, Mrs. Gongadze spoke at the parliamentary session and begged the national deputies to remove Mr. Potebenko, who she said had proven to be above the law and a threat to all Ukrainians. Mrs. Gongadze is battling the Procurator General's Office in court to have her recognized as a victim of events surrounding a murder, which would allow her access to the investigation into her son's disappearance and probable death. She has won a first-round battle in court but faces continued resistance from the General Procurator's Office, which has filed an appeal in the case.

President Kuchma, who has taken to the airwaves and the print medium to convince Ukrainians and the world that the crisis in Kyiv is a strictly political one aimed at displacing him from office, said during a visit to Chornobyl on February 20 that he believes his former prime minister, Pavlo Lazarenko, who is now spending his second year in a U.S. jail on charges of money laundering, and Ms. Tymoshenko are behind the concerted political effort to discredit him. Without going into detail, the president said that there are "specific reasons" for his thinking. He also asserted that the political rallies and anti-Kuchma campaigns are not being driven by a popular groundswell.

"All that happens is dictated not by enthusiasm but by money," said President Kuchma, who maintains there is no political crisis in Ukraine, only a desire to develop one by his political opponents.

Two days later, during an interview with the popular tabloid Fakty i Kommentari filmed by a local television station, Mr. Kuchma asserted that he was not involved in any way in the murder of Mr. Gongadze. "I look into your eyes and am prepared to swear on the Bible and on the Constitution that I have never issued such an order to destroy a human being," said Mr. Kuchma.

The tape recordings that are the source of the president's problems are undergoing analysis at the International Press Institute in Vienna, with funding supplied by the U.S. non-governmental organization Freedom House.

Oleksander Chalyi, the Ukrainian representative to the Council of Europe, said on February 20 that, regardless of what the analyses determine, Ukrainian authorities would not recognize them as legally enforceable.

"We do not know in adherence to which legal system the expertise is being conducted," explained Mr. Chalyi, according to Interfax-Ukraine. "According to the current national legislation of Ukraine, such expertise must be carried out in adherence to the Code of Criminal Procedure by the authorized bodies."

Meanwhile, Freedom House Executive Director Adrian Karatnycky said on February 17 that Ukrainian tax authorities recently had taken "a certain interest" in his organization's representative office in Kyiv. Critics of President Kuchma have said that the State Tax Administration is often used to intimidate or quiet political opponents.

Tax authorities debunked the charges the next day, stating that the inquiry to which Mr. Karatnycky referred was not into the finances of Freedom House but of one of its employees.

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