Tymoshenko's Supporters In Front of the Court House

"Landep News"

Tymoshenko's Supporters In Front of the Court House

Yulia Tymoshenko’s trial resumes on Tuesday amid criticism from the Western countries, who have accused the Ukrainian authorities of staging a political motivated trial intended, in their opinion, to disqualify the former prime minister from the next presidential elections.

The European Union officials have gone as far as to demand the incumbent president Viktor Yanukovych to put an end to this trial, thereby reflecting on one hand a lack of respect for procedures that cannot be stopped by the president of a state, unless the state is a banana republic, and on the other hand, the lack of respect for the Ukrainian justice, which is considered a priori to be corrupted and into the hands of the political power.

European Union actually threatened Yanukovych that the way the trial goes will impact on the negotiations between Ukraine and the European Union. Ukraine hopes to become a member of the continental body. In fact, Tymoshenko told the European Union that the people in this country favor an admission to the EU.

The people in this Eastern European country voted with her in 2004, and that was construed as a pro-Western trend in Ukraine, because Tymoshenko was seen as the representative of the West in this country.

When she failed to deliver the Ukrainians the admission to EU and the life conditions all hoped would emerge as soon as the regime of the Communists was over, people voted for Yanukovych, who became the president of Ukraine without promising them to become European.

In 2004, the Orange Revolution brought millions of Ukrainians into the streets of Kiev, their capital city, and of other major cities. In the capital, the people camped for days and weeks, demanding that the rigged elections be repeated.

This is how Tymoshenko and her political associate Viktor Yushchenko won elections in 2004. Then they spent the term in office, Yushchenko as president and Tymoshenko as prime minister, in constant bickering, at each other’s throats, more or less literally.

In 2010, Yushchenko scored 6 percent of the votes, and Tymoshenko qualified for the runoff. She accused the incumbent president of tempering with the elections, though his party was in opposition at the time.

She even wanted to create a new Orange Revolution, but she could not gather the millions of people that made her prime minister in 2004. Only dozens were supporting her today.

Tymoshenko was brought to trial in June 2011, under the accusation of having signed a contract with the Russian Gazprom, by which the Ukrainian people were prejudiced with millions of euros.

During the first session in court Tymoshenko was held in contempt of court and has been under arrest ever since. She insulted the judge, and refused to co-operate with the judicial system.

Tymoshenko accused the judge that he was in service of the president and told him, when asked to stand up for the court and to call the judge “your honor,” that honor must be earned.

During the trial, the former president of Ukraine took the stand and testified against his former colleague. He said that she refused in 2009 to cut a deal for $250 per 1,000 cubic meters with Gazprom, cutting it for $450 per 1,000 cubic meters. In the end the Ukrainians were spared the terrifying perspective of paying $450 per 1,000 cubic meters because the Russians gave them a discount, so that they paid $360 per 1,000 cubic meters.

The funny thing is that the former president said to the court that he had expected the Russians to sell at no more than $100 per cubic meters. He added that the country was having 24 billion cubic meters in stock by that time, and no more gas was needed, making Tymoshenko’s purchase useless and extremely costly.

Yushchenko said he was not informed by his prime minister of this deal and was in the position of finding out details from an anonymous source, which gave him a copy of the contract.

The former president said that the best way to establish the truth about this contract was to call to the stand Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin.

Gazprom has issued a statement according to which the deals with the Ukrainian counterparts was done with the observance of Russian and Ukrainian laws. But legality is not the issue in this deal, but the possibility of embezzlement by oversizing the price, which could come under the ambit of the criminal law under some circumstances.

If found guilty, Tymoshenko faces ten years in prison. If she is condemned without the execution of the time in jail her political career will be over, because she will not be able to run for another office.

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