Allegations that selection of judge candidates not objective

The High Council of Justice has received eight complaints from candidates for the post of judge and will be checking the results of the tests they took in June.

The Deputy Head of the High Council of Justice, Lidia Izovitova informed Ukrainska Pravda that because of the complaints, the High Council has asked the High Qualifying Commission for material on establishing the test results. She said that their information suggests that the complaints were received from Mykolaiv, Rivne and Khmelnytski.

The complaints talk of lack of objectivity in assessing all written work, as well as flaws in the wording of test questions which had, they said, more than one correct response.

The Head of the High Qualifying Commission, Ihor Samsin had previously told the BBC Ukrainian Service that the test was completely objective, that none of the members of the Commission had known the questions before and that an automated system had been used for setting them. He claimed that the subjective factor could be excluded.

Despite this, observers have questioned the transparency of the process for choosing candidates, and the public have noted that there are a large number of children of current heads of the courts among the candidates.

The qualifying test was on the basis of the Odessa Law Academy which is headed by National Deputy from the Party of the Regions Serhiy Kivalov.

Members of the High Council of Justice have formed a working group to look into the situation.