Yulia Tymoshenko

"Landep News"

Yulia Tymoshenko

A Ukrainian court of law rejected on Monday the request of the former PM’s lawyers, who were demanding that she be released from arrest for the duration of her trial for abuse of office. The judge maintained that Tymoskenko was guilty of contempt of court and of refusing to cooperate with the judicial system she called a “puppet” of president Viktor Yanukovych.
She was taken into custody on Friday as she refused to rise as the court was convened, and systematically interrupted the proceedings of the trial, insulting the judge in more than one occasion.
She refused to acknowledge the testimony of a witness, who was expressing himself in Russian, demanding a translator in order to understand what he was saying, and claiming that the language of the country was Ukrainian.
The judge’s decision made on Friday to hold her in contempt was upheld even though thousands of her supporters were gathered outside the court in Kiev, where the hearing was being held.
Tymoshenko is being accused in a case where she is said to have forced national gas company to sign a contract with Russian Gazprom in 2009. She insists she was innocent, saying that by the signing of the contract she ended weeks of gas disruptions to Ukrainian and European consumers, and that she was authorized to sign that contract.
Russian Gazprom also issued a statement in which they say that the contract was perfectly legal, and had been signed with a very thorough observance of the law in both Russia and Ukraine.
European leaders have joined the Ukrainian analysts in assessing that the real motive of this trial is the upcoming parliamentary election, and that convicting her as felon would prevent her from running to the elections again. They did so discretly by expressing concern about the observance of justice independence in the case of the former PM.
In assessing that, they seem to overlook that the reason she is behind bars right now is not necessarily the contract which was signed with the Russians in Gazprom, but the contempt of the court, which is punishable in all democratic states of Europe, not to mention the Unites States.
Regardless of how the trial may be deemed by the population or by the opposition, calling a judge a puppet of the incumbent president is an offence that could not be tolerated anywhere in the democratic world.
For such an offense made in a court of law, the people gathered in front of the court to demand her release (in far smaller numbers than during the so called “Orange Revolution”) would be thrown in jail and no one would ever argue whether the sentence was justified or not. Why should Tymoskenko’s case be different?
Throughout the European Union, to which Tymoshenko told her constituents the country under her wise leadership would adhere (but did not), not recognizing a man to speak his own language in court is construed as a discrimination, even though she was right to demand a translator.
Refusing to stand when a judge enters his own court is a very distressing signal the presidential hopeful Yulia Tymoshenko is sending to the population of Ukraine. Can anyone imagine Barack Obama refusing to stand, should he be in a court of law, during or after the term in office?
Can anyone imagine what a country looks like when the former prime minister refuses to stand when a judge enters his own court? Can anyone imagine Silvio Berlusconi telling the judge “At such an important moment, I don’t want in that chair a judge like you,” as she was reported to have said judge Rodion Kyreyev? Can anyone imagine David Cameron telling the judge, when asked to address the court with the words “Your Honor,” that “honor must be first deserved.” After all, if Tymoshenko had reasons to doubt the ability of the judge she could have recused him in a very delicate manner, by means of procedure.
Can anyone imagine a reason why the average Ukrainian should stand up in court, if she who desires to be the president does not and gets away with it?

Protest in Favor of Tymoshenko

Everybody knows that in this part of the world democracy is a travesty and that former republics of the Soviet and even some of the former Communist republics that were not part of the Soviet are ruled in an “assertive” manner by people who had grown richer and richer overnight.
Everybody knows that from Bucharest to Kiev throughout this “desolation” land justice is being used sometimes as a political weapon, and the requisite that it be an equal power in the state is sometimes bended to the will of a political party or another.
Judicial abuse was not born in Ukraine, but everybody knows that judicial abuse is battled by judicial procedures not by scorning the judge in his courtroom, without any solid evidence.
What evidence does Yulia  Tymoshenko bring for the public opinion to believe that what she said to the judge was the real thing? That “we all know how things get done”?
When talking about what keeps the former Ukrainian prime minister behind bars, one must consider not the basic  accusation that she signed some contract with the Russian, but an attitude which is common to people like Tymoshenko in Eastern Europe, and would never be tolerated in the democratic world.
The point is not whether she is guilty as charged, but whether she can handle the “less-majesty” of coming down from “heavens” among the mortals and accepting that as a citizen she has some rights and some obligations.
And one of the obligations is definitely to answer to any charge a judge may bring against her, and show the court and the public opinion through judicial means that she is innocent of them.
Insulting the judge cannot be tolerated even if someone had evidence beyond reasonable doubt that judge had just got of the phone with president Yanukovych before entering the court. Which they don’t, by the way. Or at least they have not presented to the press yet.
That Yanukovych is in cahoots with the Russians, it is no news for anyone. He is a Russian himself.  Ukrainians knew that when they elected him as a president, and gave Tymoshenko a bitter lesson after four disappointing years in power. That he rigged the elections in 2004 is also not in debate here.
What is in debate here is a certain way of understanding politics and the status politicians must have in society. From that perspective, Yulia Tymoshenko is serving her time behind bars justly, considering that she was held in contempt.
That she will prove herself innocent of the charges against her brought by the judge regarding the contract with the Russians which is said to have taken some millions of dollar out of national economy, that remains to be seen as the trial goes on. The question is what will happen next when she appears in court?
From the way she looked in court on Monday it would seem that she learnt a lesson. She appeared tired but did not complained about conditions. Ukrainian human rights ombudsman is expected to back her plea for release.
It is possible that Tymoshenko was caught in the “important moment for the country” and confounded the courtroom with a political debate arena, when she said that her attitude was a protest against corruption in justice.
When she is released from jail she has a chance to fight this battle on the right battle field. Until then, even if she is the savior of Ukraine, she still has to respect justice and court, and to use the political power, when she gets it, to make the system work better.
This is the way of democracy, to whom people more important than her have submitted, if we are to consider only Dominique Strauss Kahn, who was not been held in contempt, or Moshe Katzav, who was also sentenced for what he did outside the court, or Helmut Kohl, or Jacque Chirac, who made comments in press, but never in court.
All politicians, from democratic countries or not, when being brought before judge, have a tendency to say that they are victims of political retaliation, but it is up to the judge to decide whether it is true or not. Otherwise, politicians get an impunity that no Constitution in the world could possibly accept.

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