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Ukraine CEC asks Constitutional Court whether offender can be elected president

KIEV, January 10. /ITAR-TASS/. The Ukrainian Constitutional Court received an address from the country’s Central Elections Commission (CEC) with the request to explain whether an offender with unexpunged and unspent conviction for a premeditated crime to be elected president, press secretary of the country’s Constitutional Court Gennady Chernenko told Itar-Tass on Friday.

“The address came to us today and was passed to the secretariat,” the representative of the court said. In his words, the standard procedure first envisages an address to be considered at the Secretariat of the Constitutional Court for its compliance with the law on the Ukrainian Constitutional Court,” he said. “Then the address is considered by a panel of judges, who decide on launching court proceedings,” Chernenko said. According to the law, after launching the court proceedings the court can try the case for up to three months, he added. Meanwhile, if the request is made to try the case urgently, the deadlines can be cut to one month, the press secretary added.

On Thursday, January 9, the text of the address to the Constitutional Court was approved at a CEC meeting with the request to explain several articles of the Ukrainian fundamental law, particularly whether an offender with unexpunged and unspent conviction for a premeditated crime can be nominated and registered as a candidate and elected at the post of president.

Ukrainian CEC member Aleksander Shelestov is named as a representative of the committee in the court.

Next presidential election will be held in Ukraine in 2015. In October 2013 Chairman of the country’s Central Elections Commission Mikhail Okhendovsky assumed that former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, who serves a 7-year sentence for the abuse of powers in the signing of the gas contracts with Russia in 2009, can run for the highest post in the country at the presidential election in 2015.

“She has the right to do this as any other Ukrainian citizen. There cannot be any discrimination in this issue,” the CEC chairman stated then. Meanwhile, he did not guarantee that Timoshenko can be registered as candidate for president. “If such situation emerges the CEC will act in the same way as it did before and intends to do so in the future,” he said. “The document we produced will be assessed from the point of view of legal reality at the specific moment of time,” the CEC chief added.