KIEV, Oct 30 — Hundreds of people demonstrated outside the Constitutional Court in the Ukrainian capital today to protest against a ruling to block a number of anti-corruption laws.
The protesters, including students and anti-corruption activists, held placards which read “Corrupted court of Ukraine” and “Out the pigs of the constitutional court.”
Police did not intervene even when protesters threw smoke grenades into the court building and threatened to move in.
The court on Wednesday said that a number of anti-corruption laws were unconstitutional, including one on free public access to officials’ asset declarations, in a move that sparked an outcry in the ex-Soviet country.
President Volodymyr Zelensky convened an emergency meeting of the National Security Council on Thursday, saying lawmakers should prepare new bills to undo the damage and they should then be debated by parliament “immediately”.
After a 2014 popular uprising, the West demanded tangible progress in Ukraine’s fight against corruption, and Kiev established various anti-corruption bodies such as the National Agency for Preventing Corruption and the specialised court.
The EU has warned that its visa-free regime for Ukraine could be suspended if Kiev does not do enough to combat corruption, considered by the bloc to be the country’s top risk.
According to Transparency International, Ukraine ranked 126th out of 198 countries on the watchdog’s corruption perception index in 2019. — AFP
