Sanctions and elections: will the sanctions mechanism become another “barrier”?

Source: Censor.NET

It so happened that the intensification of talks about holding early presidential elections in Ukraine coincided with the anniversary of the imposition of sanctions on the leader of “European Solidarity” Petro Poroshenko.

Much has been written and said about the political selectivity, illegality, unconstitutionality, and corruption component of imposing sanctions on our own citizens (not to mention the politician – the leader of the opposition). This whole story will end badly for the initiators. If not in Ukrainian courts, then in the European Court of Human Rights – for sure.

But it won’t be quick. And the elections on Bankova Street are eager to be held as soon as possible. Therefore, among other things, they consider sanctions as a tool to prevent certain citizens from participating in the elections. First of all, Petro Poroshenko.

I hope that the new electoral legislation will not directly ban the participation of sanctioned persons. This would be too blatant disregard for basic constitutional rights. And at the level of the parliamentary group preparing legislation on post-war elections, they understand this perfectly well.

But sanctions, if they are not lifted, create problems for participation in elections even without a direct ban. Sanctions status actually cuts off politics from the electoral process. Due to the ban on transactions, a candidate cannot fulfill basic legal requirements: the CEC may not accept documents for registration, and the bank will not open an election fund account, not to mention the possibility of replenishing this fund (Poroshenko, let me remind you, always finances his election campaigns with his own money). As a result, the decision looks not as a legal safeguard, but as a technology for political elimination of a competitor.

This logic is precisely what is behind the delay in the judicial appeal of the imposition of sanctions on Poroshenko, which has been considered by the Supreme Court of Ukraine for almost a year without result. The process is actually blocked by the defendants: the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine ignores the hearing, documents are submitted untimely at the request of the court, and when all formal reasons to postpone the hearing end, new reasons appear, such as the illness of a representative of the Office of the President of Ukraine. And the reasons are not important here – you just need to wait until the start of the elections.

A separate problem is the grounds for the sanctions. They are based on the proposal of the head of the State Financial Monitoring Service, Philip Pronin, which was supported by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. In terms of content, this document almost completely repeats the accusations from materials that were actively distributed by Andriy Portnov at one time, and was classified by the State Security Committee, which allowed it to be considered without publicity. I don’t even mention the personal composition of those who voted for these sanctions. These five, now former officials, themselves found themselves at the epicenter of corruption scandals.

As a result, a holistic picture emerges: sanctions were applied not as a state security tool, but as a political mechanism, the purpose of which is to neutralize the opponent before the start of the election campaign.

Recall that a year ago, indefinite sanctions were imposed against the fifth President, leader of the European Solidarity party, Petro Poroshenko. Zelenskyy’s decree on sanctions is being challenged by Poroshenko in the Supreme Court as illegal.

Poroshenko’s lawyer Ilya Novikov posted on his Facebook page the chronology of the preparation of sanctions , which was revealed during the trial. As is known, for a year, government representatives have not provided the public with the arguments on the basis of which sanctions were imposed against Petro Poroshenko.

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