Today at 7.30 pm President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz will announce the mission to monitor court proceedings involving Yulia Tymoshenko on behalf of the EP. Aleksander Kwasniewski and Pat Cox will take part in it. This is good news – we have managed to build a team which will be credible, competent and ‘politically mature’.
It will not be an easy mission. The cassation process refers to the procedures, not to the justice. The Ukrainian authorities will make any effort to prove the observers, and through them the world, that everything was OK, which means that no paragraph was broken though everyone agrees that they are draconian.
The observers have a very narrow room for maneuver. If the Ukrainian side proves that they acted in accordance with the procedures, their presence will be treated as a sign of the international community’s acceptance for Yulia Tymosneko’s imprisonment. If not, the case will go back to the first instance and the game will start from the beginning…
According to my information, the observers will go soon to Kiev in order to ‘extend their mandate’ so that they can talk about the political situation in Ukraine before the elections. But this will be announced only tonight.
