Another test for Themis
November 16, after the Prosecutor General’s Office’s statement on completion of the investigation in the Kuchma case, the ex-president’s defense lawyers Serhii Ulianov and Viktor Petrunenko filed a complaint with the Pechersk District Court, demanding dismissal of the criminal case as being ungrounded. Leonid Kuchma, Mykola Melnychenko, Oleksandr Moroz, the complainants Lesia Gongadze, Oleksii Podolsky, also Valentyna Telychenko and Andrii Fedur were subpoenaed.
Another test for Ukrainian Themis. Will she cope with this case, considering its political scope and reverberations? Remarkably, young politicians, the hope of democracy, keep silent. Is this bias? Fear? If so, why take up politics in the first place?
Media’s response is a separate story.
In fact, the start of criminal proceedings in the Kuchma case this March has affected whole social strata, government, cultural, educational institutions, people representing various generations, journalists, and the PGO. In the first place it has affected the entire system. As repeatedly mentioned by Den/The Day, powerful whitewashing mechanisms within and without Ukraine has been at play after March 2011 when the ex-president found himself actually threatened by legal responsibility. With time there are growing fears that the Ukrainian judicial system won’t be capable of restoring justice, given its shaky concepts of justice. Not so long ago, Melnychenko’s defense counsel Mykola Nedilko said the Pechersk District Court could grant the complaint and dismiss the case, reports UNIAN.
Should this happen, the Pechersk court would reduce to nil the efforts of all those who struggled to rid this country of Kuchma’s ten-year heritage with its “antirules,” destroy what fragile concept of the norm of law had formed after the PGO opened the criminal case, and assert impunity. Leonid Kuchma, who keeps saying about his high ratings, would return to active politics.
How about Renat Kuzmin who said that there are heaps of dead bodies round the Gongadze case?
Mykola Melnychenko (however one feels about him) must have meant this when he said before today’s court hearing: “If Kuchma gets away with it today, tomorrow the gluttonous regime, assured of its complete impunity, will start sending whole editorial offices to the Tarashcha Forest.” He wrote this on his personal website, addressing concerned citizens.
Although “whole editorial offices” sounds like an overstatement, it is true that the bureaucrat’s impunity corrupts the political system, while the ex-president’s impunity corrupts it absolutely.
Worst of all, there is an attempt to soft-pedal the Kuchma case with the silence of the lambs — people and politicians who once took part in the project Ukraine without Kuchma, journalists who insisted they were fighting to restore justice in the Gongadze case. In other words, the motto “Down with Kuchma!” was a temporary timeserving one.
In his statement entitled “To Concerned Citizens” Melnychenko writes that “after you learn about a crime prepared and committed against a journalist, think twice before coming out in support of justice. Journalists are killed only by people vested with power. Kuchma said that any power comes from the Lord. Will you have enough strength to act against this system, all the way? Your close and dear ones will be vulnerable. Will you be prepared to lose them [if worse comes to worst]? Those same journalists, in return for 30 pieces of silver, will point at you as a possible murderer. Is there reason enough to defend journalists against characters like Pikhovshek in their ranks now that the election date is getting closer? Pressing issues can be solved today primarily by adequately assessing realities. You must first ask yourself whether an innocent person should be condemned or a murderer allowed to stay at large and continue his criminal activities.”
An adequate assessment of realities is what a morally disoriented society needs in the first place. This is journalist realm and this is up to journalists to disinfect an infected system (whose infectious disease may manifest itself after today’s court hearing).
COMMENTARY
Oleksii PODOLSKY: “Once during Shuster’s talk show I had a debate with Sonia Koshkina. She said no one needed the case [i.e., the Gongadze one. – Ed.], that all were sick and tired of it, that people were no longer interested, that there were more pressing issues. I didn’t argue the presence of more pressing issues but said: ‘If you want to make a statement, not only in return for a sum, not only because this statement has to be made, but simply because this statement answers your personal convictions; when you start fighting for your ideas or for those of future Ukraine… we have to complete this case if we don’t want our mouths shut or our teeth kicked in with a militiaman’s heavy boot. For a journalist this is a matter of honor, conscience, and solidarity. This case is a matter of the freedom of expression. The man was murdered because he spoke the truth. Gongadze worked in the context of large-scale falsehood that would be repeated in 2004. The runoff election [of the 1999 presidential campaign. – Ed.] was won by Kuchma placing fourth. There were also large-scale falsifications in the first round. Gongadze fought them and Yeliashkevych was hit on the bridge of his nose with brass knuckles, actually a lethal blow he survived by sheer miracle. Let me tell those who question Gongadze’s personality that he was the only journalist who let Yeliashkevych speak on the air while on hospital bed. That’s why they killed him. I address all our journalists: If you want to live in this country, if you are humans, not pushovers, if you are intelligent members of the fourth estate, then get down to business!
“I think that everyone understands everything. Our journalists studied at universities and went to church. The problem is that the intelligentsia often takes a stand dictated not by intellect but by material interests. It is then people resort to compromises with their conscience and act to meet their own interests. Intellectuals and especially journalists are people who understand everything. This is what makes them worse than those who lack information or understanding.”
