Ex-speaker of parliament compared who is the bigger dictator: Poroshenko or Zelensky – Suspicion

Syroid spoke about political pressure during Poroshenko’s time and attempts by the authorities to change the judicial system

Former Verkhovna Rada speaker Oksana Syroid, who now serves in the Defense Forces, gave an extensive interview in which she explained why, in Ukraine, where a large anti-corruption infrastructure has been formed, the problem of corruption still has not been overcome. The ex-politician names political pressure on parliament during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko among the reasons for this situation. Syroid talked about this in an interview with the public initiative “Holka,” which was published exclusively on the Glavkom website.

Syroid recalled the work of the Verkhovna Rada of the VIII convocation and the process of preparing judicial reform after the Revolution of Dignity. According to her, in December 2014 she registered draft law No.1497 on reforming the judicial system in accordance with European standards. Its key author, Syroid says, was Roman Kuybida. Ten days later a presidential draft law No.1656 “On Ensuring the Right to a Fair Trial” was registered. Syroid asserts that, contrary to the Regulations of the Verkhovna Rada, it was not registered as an alternative to her bill. “The committee cheated, the apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada cheated under the head of the apparatus. The committee was then slavishly subordinate to the president: whatever the president said, the chair of the committee did,” Syroid said.

According to her, political processes under President Zelensky may seem harsh to observers, but in the previous convocation of parliament, in her view, much harsher methods were used.

“When people today look at the political process, it seems to them that something brutal is happening there. They simply were not in the previous convocation of parliament and did not see what instruments and methods the previous president used,” the former speaker said.

Syroid also spoke about the vote on the presidential draft law on judicial reform in February 2015. In her view, the document was “blatantly raw,” yet the president insisted on bringing it to the session hall. She links that vote to the signing of the Minsk agreements. “With the law ‘On a Fair Court’ they were creating a background so that no one would notice the betrayal in Minsk,” Syroid claims. After that, she says, work began on amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine. Syroid joined the Constitutional Commission despite distrust of Poroshenko’s administration.

She explained that she agreed to work on the reform because she considered it a principled task to remove political influence on judges. In particular, Syroid opposed having the Verkhovna Rada appoint judges.

Separately, the former speaker described the work of the Constitutional Commission and the participation in it of representatives of the judicial community. According to her, the process was organized by then-deputy head of the Presidential Administration Oleksiy Filatov.

Syroid asserts that involving a wide range of participants made it possible to see and neutralize the influence of some judges who, in her assessment, opposed reforming the justice system according to European approaches.

It is worth noting that Syroid saw the judicial reform from the inside, while at the same time she questions the very logic by which it was attempted. The ex-MP explains why belief in the “right law” turned out to be an illusion, why the reform of 2016 was inevitable but limited, and why, in her view, a real judicial reform is impossible without reaching a new agreement among those who control the state’s resources. All of this can be read in her interview published on Glavkom.