Why media outlets of Mr Kolomoisky and Mr Medvedchuk drive the hysteria around the drastic lack of judges

As of today, we counted around 30 mentions in the media with the same message – “Ukrainian courts desperately lack judges and therefore the new composition of the High Qualification Commission of Judges (HQCJ) must be formed urgently.” The initial start of such an information campaign was made by the TV plot on 1+1 TV channel that belongs to the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. 

After watching the plot, it may seem that the only problem of the Ukrainian judiciary is the lack of judges (which obviously is not) and therefore it is crucially important to make the amendments to the legislation and eliminate the deficit.  

Nonetheless, none of these sources state that before 2014 there was no problem with the number of judges in Ukraine. However, the level of trust of citizens to the judiciary reached its bottom, which led to the mass-scale qualification assessment. 

Currently, a new Presidential bill #3711 on the judiciary is being considered in the Parliament. The bill de-facto provides for the exclusion of the international experts from the HQCJ Selection Commission and gives full control over the formation of the HQCJ in the hands of the judges of the notorious District Administrative Court of Kyiv (DACK) and the unreformed and corrupted HCJ, which has already beaten all the records in the number of failures. 

The DACK and the HCJ are satisfied with the conditions provided by the bill as, in this case, they will be able to keep the control over judges and cover “any scum in the judiciary”. 
Furthermore, the Presidential bill does not establish the procedure of cleansing the HCJ as provided by the IMF Memorandum. The IMF set the deadline for meeting this requirement for October 2020. 

That is why, Mr Kolomoisky, who insists on giving up any cooperation with the IMF and returning back to cooperation with Russia, became the sudden ally of the HCJ.

Thus, media that belong to Mr Kolomoisky and Mr Medvedchuk and their satellites de-facto suggest to disrupt the cooperation with the international partners and bury Ukrainian economy entirely but keep a dependent and corrupt judiciary in place. 

This is another crucial argument not to adopt the Presidential bill #3711 and instead develop the new bill, which would reflect the national interests of Ukraine and comply with international obligations.