Page 12 - UKRRptMar21

2.6​ ​Zelenskiy promises judicial reforms
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy promised on March 1 that Ukraine will implement an effective judicial reform, ​which will guarantee the right of every citizen to an independent and fair court, the presidential press service reported. Addressing the forum "Ukraine 30. Development of Justice" in Kyiv, Zelenskiy reminded that every government in Ukraine had promised to carry out a judicial reform, but the courts remained unreformed, corrupt and inefficient.
"We are set to break this vicious circle. An honest and fair court is exactly the part of my presidential program on, which the implementation of many other parts largely depends,” Zelenskiy said, adding that the best anti-corruption bodies lose their meaning if corrupt officials avoid fair punishment in the courts. "At the legislative level, we can introduce the best conditions for attracting investment, but it will not work if the investor is not able to protect their investment right here in a Ukrainian court. In addition, a successful judicial reform in Ukraine is a catalyst for our integration into the EU and NATO," Zelenskiy said.
Due to the absence of almost a third of judges, citizens are forced to wait for months and sometimes years for their case to be heard, Zelenskiy stressed, highlighting the importance of resuming the work of the High Qualifications Commission of Judges and improving the procedure for selecting candidates for the High Council of Justice. He also said that the reform of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine is relevant.
According to Zelenskiy, another problem is the lack of honest and independent judges, so it is important to eliminate abuses and ensure the transparency of the court. "IT solutions can be an effective step in this direction. By analogy with government services on a smartphone, we seek - and will certainly do – Court in Smartphone." Most bureaucratic procedures will go online, which will speed up the court proceedings, minimize corruption and opportunities for abuse," he said.
While no details of the future Court in Smartphone are immediately available, it seems that the long-needed and long-promised judicial reform will again dive into technical details, leaving the core issue of trust and justice unresolved. Ukraine has to date got enough IT tools for its courts, including the transparent and easily available unified register of rulings, which is, however, full of strange verdicts that contradict the laws and each other. The system of automatic random assignment of cases to judges is also in place, but special cases still go to very special judges. The Court in Smartphone will be successful in Ukraine only if there is an independent, corruption-free android judge behind it. Human corruption is the key problem of Ukrainian courts, which are already governed through smartphones owned by top judges and politicians.
So, the key risk that we see here is that after another reform, Ukraine will get an advanced-looking smartphone-friendly signboard to the old and corrupt judiciary. Meanwhile, we will see whether Zelenskiy’s government will be able to do the smallest step towards the judicial reform, which is the reload of the High Council of Justice in a way that will satisfy Ukraine’s western partners, including the IMF.
12​ UKRAINE Country Report​ March 2021 ​ ​www.intellinews.com