President Yushchenko appoints judges to Constitutional Court

President Viktor Yushchenko has signed an edict appointing Volodymyr Kampo, Viktor Shyshkin, and Dmytro Lilak to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. Prior to this the head of state met with the appointees.

Without a doubt, Viktor Shyshkin, an MP of the 2nd and 3rd Convocations, is the most public of the newly appointed trio of judges. From 1991 to 1993 he was Prosecutor General of Ukraine and was recently described as a possible replacement for Sviatoslav Piskun. Shyshkin was one of the parliamentarians who met with Major Melnychenko “somewhere in Europe” and then played the recordings in the Ukrainian parliament.

Volodymyr Kampo is a noted scholar, public figure, head of the Chair of Municipal and Administrative Law at Kyiv National University’s Center of Jurisprudential Studies, and chairman of the Constitutional Law Society. In 1992 he was appointed minister of justice by presidential edict, but parliament found procedural violations and the edict was suspended.

Dmytro Lilak is not a public figure. He is one of those who are called a “serious professional.” A judge in the Economic Chamber of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, he heard the resonant case concerning the return of shares of the Halychyna Oil Refinery to state ownership. During the meeting with the newly appointed judges President Yushchenko said he hoped that the Verkhovna Rada would see to it that the judges are sworn in and can start doing their professional duties in a timely fashion.

On Nov. 3 the 7th congress of Ukrainian judges elected five judges to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine and reaffirmed the authority of Andriy Stryzhak, who was elected by the previous congress but has not had an opportunity to take his oath in parliament.

Now it’s up to parliament. The Verkhovna Rada must first fill the vacancies left in the Constitutional Court and then arrange for the new judges to be sworn in the session hall, at a formal meeting of parliament in the presence of the president and the government. Whether this will happen soon is hard to say. After the sitting of parliament’s Conciliation Council on Nov. 14, the president’s representative in parliament, Yuriy Kliuchkovsky, got the impression (which he shared with journalists) that “there are no plans to do this quickly.” So far the issue of the judges’ appointments has been adjourned from Nov. 17 to the next sessional week.