The initial response from the Russian authorities was forceful, with over 3,000 detentions on January 23. Since then, a full court press has been deployed to depress turnout, including targeted lockdowns, a coordinated propaganda push, turning the screws on social media platforms, journalist intimidation, and dusting off draconian anti-protest laws that punish peaceful assembly with prison terms.

Despite the timing, however, the protests are about much more than Navalny, who is not exactly universally embraced in Russia (his approval ratings were hovering at 20% according to polls conducted by the Levada Center after his poisoning last year).

The post FLASH: What’s Fueling Russian Protests? appeared first on Geopolitical Monitor.

The International Commission Against Impunity for Corruption in Guatemala (or the CICIG) remains locked in a battle of wills with the administration of Guatemala’s sitting president Jimmy Morales and the Guatemalan Congress. The commission and local prosecutors earned widespread international praise and local popularity when they exposed then-President Otto Perez Molina as the head of an organized criminal network, leading to his resignation and subsequent arrest in late 2015. Political neophyte and former comedian Jimmy Morales then became president in 2016 having campaigned on the slogan “neither corrupt nor a thief.” Things did not end there however, with the ‘clean’ successor to President Molina swiftly being accused by investigators of the same kind of corrupt activities as his predecessor. As a result, Morales has become engaged in an increasingly bitter public battle for political survival with the UN-backed hybrid body.

Impact

President Morales throwing up roadblocks to the investigation. Following Molina’s fall, the CICIG and local prosecutors’ ongoing investigations quickly led them to President Morales and his family, and last year the president’s brother and son were arrested for fraud. The president himself was investigated for an illicit campaign finance scheme, but the investigation ended in stalemate between the administration and the CICIG, with Morales protected by his presidential immunity and Commission head Ivan Velasquez beating off an attempt to expel him from Guatemala by Morales last August. Now the commission says its investigations are being impeded by the removal of police investigators assigned to work on its caseloads. The 11 police investigators in question were moved from the country’s anti-corruption body by the Guatemalan government, allegedly to help with security during the week before Easter. The CICIG head has said that the aim of their removal was “to affect the investigations” that have thus far netted high-ranking politicians and their relatives according to AP.

The post Guatemala’s Establishment Fights Back against UN-Backed Corruption Board appeared first on Geopolitical Monitor.

A Brazilian federal court in Porto Alegre has unanimously rejected the appeal of ex-president and current presidential candidate Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, thus upholding a conviction related to his taking $1.1 million in bribes while in office. Lula’s original sentence of nine and a half years in prison was subsequently increased to 12 years. The court decision may jeopardize Lula’s run for the presidency in late 2018, and in doing so change the landscape of Brazilian politics for years to come.

Background

The anti-laundering probe “Operation Carwash” has caused a series of political uproars by exposing corruption at the highest levels of the Brazilian government. Investigations have resulted in the impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s chosen successor and fellow Workers Party (PT) leader, as well as corruption allegations against current President Michel Temer. The probe also unveiled illicit dealings between the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht and government officials across Latin America. The exposure of rampant corruption has left many Brazilians disillusioned with the political process, with polls showing up to 32 percent of voters will not vote for any candidate in upcoming elections in October of this year.

The post Operation Carwash: Lula’s Presidential Hopes Dealt a New Blow appeared first on Geopolitical Monitor.

Improved economic performance and ongoing stalemate in the civil war are the backdrop to a new political struggle between the West-backed government of President Poroshenko and the two-year-old National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU). Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, so called “clans” of oligarchs have run the country, controlling large media outlets, powerful parliament blocs, private armies and parts of the security forces, and even in some cases maintaining strong ties to organized crime, particularly in the country’s south and southeastern regions.

Now West-imposed anti-corruption reforms are making political and business elites nervous after a string of high-profile sting operations and arrests. Tensions are rising between the anti-corruption agency and its political masters, who are accused of using Ukraine’s courts and the security services to derail its work, all the while passing motions in parliament to weaken NABU. Over this period, the West’s ability to pressure the Ukrainian establishment has declined in part because Ukraine’s improved economic performance makes it less dependent on outside assistance.

Up until recently, the Trump administration has focused more on Ukraine’s outward security situation and less on the domestic fight against corruption. However, the U.S. has come out strongly behind NABU in this most recent fight dominating the headlines in Kiev.

Background

Corruption remains a hot-button issue with mass appeal. When Ukrainians rose up against their autocratic president Viktor Yanukovych during the Euromaidan protests of almost four years ago, it was a revolution not just against the pro-Russia shift Yanukovych seemed to have made in his foreign policy choices (the first protests began after Yanukovych announced he was suspending Ukraine’s years-long pursuit of a Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement). The Euromaidan movement was also an uprising against the massive corruption which had long plagued Ukraine’s politics, and which intensified spectacularly under the rule of Yanukovych, who headed an infamously opportunistic clan known as “the Family.”

The post The Corruption Fight Gets Ugly in Ukraine appeared first on Geopolitical Monitor.

A secret recording apparently implicating President Michel Temer in obstruction of justice and bribery isn’t so much a new scandal, but just the latest dramatic twist in the long-running, mother-of-all scandals that is Operation Carwash. Back when Lava Jato first broke, there were whispers that Temer was also one of the hundreds of politicians caught with their hands in the cookie jar. More recently, the release of a list of nearly 100 senior politicians implicated in corruption includes many of Temer’s cabinet members and key members of the congressional leadership.

This latest recording involves Temer giving his apparent acquiescence to hush money payments to Eduardo Cunha, a jailed politician who was instrumental in bringing down former president Dilma Rousseff.

With this latest bombshell, the direction of Brazil’s politics has swung dramatically. Weeks ago, President Michel Temer was pushing his austerity program as the cure to what ails Brazil’s sick economy. Now all of the president’s efforts will be spent on his own self-defense, like so many of his contemporaries in Brazil’s political establishment.

Impact

Tchau, President Temer. He says that the recording had been edited hundreds of times to deceive the public; he says that he will not resign. But make no mistake: President Temer is done. Even before the scandal, his approval ratings were hovering in the single-digits. He was loved by investors, as his austerity platform and conservative credentials helped Brazil’s stock market make a modest recovery, but the general public views him as illegitimate and/or tainted by the Lava Jato scandal.

The post Operation Carwash: Temer in a Tempest appeared first on Geopolitical Monitor.

Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) announced what is potentially its biggest case yet. The file involves two civil servants on trial for corruption linked to the procurement of electronic identity cards. But it doesn’t end there. So far, a further 37 senior politicians and bureaucrats have been implicated in the scheme. The scandal is said to have cost $170 million in state funds, and it dates all the way back to 2009. Members of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP), including the justice minister and the speaker of the lower house of parliament have all been caught up in the scandal. And now the government of President Joko Widodo finds itself under pressure from all sides.

President Widodo had pledged increased transparency upon taking office in 2014, but despite his efforts, graft remains firmly embedded in Indonesia’s politics and business dealings. Overall the south-east Asian giant ranked a lowly 90 out of 176 countries in Transparency International’s most recent Corruption Perceptions index. Indonesians still perceived parliament as the most corrupt national body in a recent survey from Transparency International, although the KPK also detained a Constitutional Court judge on suspicion of bribery this January.

Background

Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission comes of age? The KPK (Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi) was formed in 2002. Up until then, the authority to conduct anti-corruption activities had belonged to police and prosecutors; they failed to check the extraordinary nature of corruption in Indonesia. The popular KPK has claimed some successes in its brief existence, but it has also been the target of graft probes itself, some of which are politically motivated. Despite all this, the KPK remains of one the country’s most admired and trusted institutions, giving further weight to the charges it is leveling against the ruling PDIP.

The post Corruption Scandal Rocks Indonesia’s Establishment appeared first on Geopolitical Monitor.

To begin with, there are a few predictions that can be made now that leadership transition is a thing of the past. These would have held true regardless of the composition of the Standing Committee.

In the foreign policy sphere, China will be climbing down from its extreme positions on the South China Sea and the deepening crisis in Sino-Japanese relations. There was more of a need for Chinese politicians to display strong personal convictions on these issues moving into the leadership transition. Now that the new leadership roster has been finalized, we can expect China to adopt a more conciliatory approach to resolving these regional disputes. This is not to say that China is going to drop its claim on the Senkaku Islands or give up its assertion that the waters directly off the coast of China are the sole military domain of the PLA Navy. Rather, the new government will distance itself from some of the more extreme steps that have been taken in the past year, such as the tolerance for mass displays of anti-Japanese sentiment across China, the spurning of Japanese diplomatic advances, and the dispatch of military patrols to the disputed area.

It’s also possible that a brief window of opportunity has opened up for China to work out an understanding on the South China Sea under the auspices of ASEAN. The new leadership will be forced to ask itself a difficult question: is it finally time to give up the (some would say foolhardy) unilateral claim on the wider South China Sea in order to forestall the possibility of deepening US military engagement in the area? The answer might just end up being ‘yes.’

The Xi Jinping regime will also be able to leverage this clean slate of legitimacy in the domestic sphere. Expect the new Chinese government to continue the country’s slow transition away from mass low-cost production to higher wages and more value-added industries. This will result in higher levels of domestic consumption and a gradual appreciation in the value of the yuan.

There will be thousands of Chinese workers who lose out in this kind of economic transition however, and it remains to be seen how the regime will deal with the political blowback that’s sure to result from the scaling back of policies aimed at mass employment.

And this is where the question on the tip of the tongue of countless Western commentators comes in: how does the new Standing Committee bode for political reform in China?

To put it bluntly: not so good.

Outgoing President Hu Jintao, who was frequently pegged as a reform-minded leader stymied by the conservative members of his own Standing Committee, seems to have lost big against Jiang Zemin in the competition over who can seed the new leadership with the most protégés.  On top of incoming President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, the Standing Committee consists of Wang Qishan, Zhang Gaoli, Yu Zhengsheng, Zhang Dejiang, and Liu Yunshan. Two of Hu Jintao’s most reform-minded protégés, Guangdong boss Wang Yang and Organization Department head Li Yuanchao, did not make the cut.

The membership of the new Standing Committee is also overwhelmingly advanced in years. Every member except for Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang will be forced to retire within five years, which means their positions on the Standing Committee will be filled by someone else after the next party congress. Essentially, it looks like the political reform buck has been passed forward until then.

There’s no need for a vibrant imagination to predict the policies that an old, conservative-minded Standing Committee will pursue because they will likely be indiscernible from the policies that preceded them.

On the corruption front, Wang Qishan (one of the committee’s more liberal members) has been given the anti-corruption portfolio and both Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping have provided a lot of lip service to the ongoing fight against graft within the CCP. However, it’s doubtful that anything major will be done when much of the Standing Committee owes their ascendance to power networks that remain both opaque and deeply entrenched.

Among the most important of these networks are China’s massive state-owned corporations. The future of these lumbering giants of state capitalism is almost a political petri dish for China watchers; where the liberal, technocratic, and market-liberalizing impulses of the new leadership will clash against the old way of doing things that has propelled them into the highest levels of the Chinese government.

But with this Standing Committee, it’s not much of a fair fight- the old ways will come out on top.

For an introduction to the Chinese politicians that made it onto the Standing Committee, as well as those who were left out, please refer to our backgrounder on Xi Jinping and the new Chinese leadership.

The post What to Expect from China’s New Leadership appeared first on Geopolitical Monitor.

There is no shortage of information on the life and times of Bo Xilai, so in the interest of brevity this article will try to convey the essence of the man in just one anecdote. Back when Bo was the mayor of Dalian, the city hosted an official visit from then-president Jiang Zemin. On top of the usual sidewalk sweeping and screw tightening that one would expect, Bo decided to go the extra mile and imported a set of highly sophisticated eavesdropping equipment from Germany. That way, he could listen in on the president’s conversations while in the presumed privacy of his car or hotel room. The reason behind this surveillance? To monitor President Jiang’s complaints and observations as to ensure that his visit went smoothly. In the end, Bo’s obsessive paranoia carried the day, as he was promoted over one of his adversaries almost immediately after President Jiang left.

This is the man who would have surely ascended to the Politburo Standing Committee had it not been for a finely tuned sense of self-preservation in his Police Chief Wang Lijun. That he would have done so despite ongoing corruption investigations surrounding his wife and said police chief is a testament to the power and influence that he wielded only five short months ago.

But now Bo Xilai has been purged, and CCP leaders are scrambling to dirty him with something that will stick. This is the first lesson of Bo Xilai’s downfall: keeping him down may prove easier said than done. While it is true that Bo has no shortage of enemies, he is also well liked by certain segments of the population, particularly in Chongqing. One would expect the CCP leadership to be aware of this and respond by going for the jugular. But so far the best they’ve been able to do is make vague allusions that Bo sought a return to the days of the Cultural Revolution and paint him as a politician bent on rolling back market reforms, neither of which are entirely true. What’s more, even if there is a wealth of evidence pointing to graft, the CCP will think twice before going down that road out of fear it would lay bare the Party’s own shortcomings.

The lack of workable dirt on Bo Xilai is definitely a headache for the CCP. But maybe, just maybe, this is about to change. A French architect named Patrick Devillers has recently emerged as a central figure in the Bo Xilai saga. According to the Financial Times, Devillers was a former business associate of Gu Kailai, Bo Xilai’s wife, and the very man that Neil Heywood ended up replacing after Devillers had a falling out with Gu. Devillers was arrested in Cambodia last month, and he flew to China last week in order to give evidence in the Gu Kailai case, presumably in exchange for immunity. It’s possible that Beijing leaned on Phnom Penh for a favor (the second in as many months) and asked them to pressure Devillers in order to get him back to China. Perhaps Devillers is the one person who can smear Bo Xilai with the same disgrace that adorns his wife.

The second lesson of the Bo Xilai affair is that the myth of a smooth CCP succession mechanism has been shattered.  Since the death of Mao Zedong, the CCP has gradually dropped socialism as its primary source of legitimacy in favor of a more practical, result-driven dogma: CCP as the vehicle by which China will rise to global prominence as an economic and military superpower. This is used as a legitimizing rationale for one party rule, and an intrinsic part of this rationale is that the party has processes in place that preclude the factional warfare that characterized internal CCP politics during the Cultural Revolution.

The Bo Xilai saga has shattered the idea that factional succession struggles are a thing of the past. And if any doubt remains, consider the fact that Bo visited the 14th Group Army in Kunming immediately after news broke that Wang Lijun had sought asylum in the US consulate in Chengdu. This was the regiment that had historical links to his celebrated father, Bo Yibo, and Bo Xilai’s decision to head there as soon as Beijing learned of the breadth of his activities gives the impression of a desperate man trying to precipitate some sort of last minute military coup.

But alas, as he are all now aware, his visit to the 14th Group Army came to nothing and now Bo Xilai and his wife are being interrogated at undisclosed locations somewhere in northern China. Although it’s always possible that things may change once a new standing committee is sworn in, the legal proceedings of the case, or rather the lack thereof, are illustrative of the rule of law deficit that continues to plague Chinese institutions. Bo Xilai may pop up again for a show trial, or maybe not, and the same goes for his disgraced wife and police chief. The hamster wheel of the Chinese legal system will continue to spin until someone in Beijing decrees it to stop. This rather arbitrary state of affairs has elicited sympathy from such unexpected corners as dissident artist Ai Weiwei, who himself got caught up in the hamster wheel for 81 days last year and is still fighting a substantial tax evasion lawsuit. Though Ai disagrees with Bo’s politics, he laments the fact that both of them are caught up in the same machine; one that doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon.

And finally, there is the lesson of Bo Xilai’s popularity. Some see it as the result of his faux neo-Maoism message resonating with the people, the ‘singing red’ and Mao Zedong SMS text messages. But in reality, this kind of political gimmickry won’t get you very far with a population not far removed from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. Rather, Bo Xilai was popular because he was viewed as sympathetic to the rural poor. And, if anything, the neo-Maoist streak was simply a byproduct of this. While in control of Chongqing, he promoted a rural-urban dipiao system whereby rural landowners could auction land in exchange for the legal right to move into the city. In a country that abides by a hukou system preventing the free internal movement of citizens, this kind of program stands out as an innovative way of achieving a wider distribution of urban opportunity. In the end, opponents to the program succeeded in having it shut down permanently in 2010.

Thus perhaps the most important subtext of the scandal is the ongoing political alienation of the rural class, a niche that Bo Xilai was able to fill. And what these supporters will choose to do when they see their former patron raked over the coals is anyone’s guess.

The post Lessons from the Fall of Bo Xilai appeared first on Geopolitical Monitor.

Despite protests over alleged vote-rigging, Vladimir Putin is firmly on track to reclaim the Russian presidency in May. But while Putin is poised to return to the office he vacated in 2008, the country he plans to govern is no longer the same.

Putin triumphs in spite of allegations of fraud

“I promised you we would win. We have won. Glory to Russia,” an emotional Putin told the thousands of supporters who had gathered outside the Kremlin soon after the last ballot had been cast in Russia’s westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad. The Russian prime minister won 63.64 per cent of the votes, while his rivals Communist Gennady Zyuganov (17.18%), business tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov (7.94%), nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky (6.22%) and ex-speaker of the Federation Council Sergey Mironov (3.85%) unsurprisingly trailed far behind.

Putin even shed a tear rejoicing in his victory in front of his supporters, but that didn’t stop a number of opposition and independent observers from claiming the elections were rigged – and then vowing to contest the results.

Russia’s independent electoral watchdog ‘Golos’ has compiled data supplied by independent election observers at polling stations across Russia on March 4 to conclude that Putin won ‘only’ 53 percent of the vote. Furthermore, their correspondents registered over 4,000 violations of electoral regulations. Golos and other observers also pointed out incredulous results in the North Caucasus where many polling stations reported a turnout of 100 per cent — with more than 90 per cent of voters casting their ballots for Putin.

The vote was also criticized by international observers dispatched by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. These observers categorized one-third of the polling stations visited as “bad” or “very bad,” albeit they noted they found fewer violations in this presidential election than in the 2011 parliamentary race. Putin admitted on March 6 that there might have been violations during the vote and ordered an investigation into the complaints — but the next day his spokesman said the issue of legitimacy surrounding Putin’s victory is closed.

Challenge of legitimizing Putin’s return

The multiple rallies held in Russian cities on March 5 protesting the alleged electoral fraud indicate that Putin is starting to – and will continue to – face a real crisis of legitimacy regarding his return to the Kremlin. The problem is more acute in larger Russian cities, with Putin’s electoral result in these districts less than the final 63 per cent, according to a break-up of the poll results in the March 5 issue of the Kommersant. In particular, Putin failed to win even half of the votes in Moscow and Omsk. And while political sentiments in Omsk have only limited impact on Russian politics, the fact that the majority of voters in Moscow oppose Putin is significant, given the role the capital’s population has historically played in political changes in Russia. The wave of protests staged before and after the elections in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities indicate that substantial parts of the urban population are no longer willing to accept the idea that the man who has been running Russia since 2000 now wants to continue to do so until 2018, if not 2024.

Putin’s electoral victory is also eight per cent lower than his previous winning total in 2004 — and seven per cent below his handpicked successor Dmitry Medvedev’s result in 2008 — indicating that support for him is shrinking as the political awakening of Russia’s urban middle class continues.

Political awakening of urban middle class, but no Arab Spring

The growing frustration of Russia’s middles classes became especially visible late last year when tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets to protest Putin’s decision to seek a return to the Kremlin – and then at the (allegedly rigged) federal parliamentary elections of December 2011. There are a number of factors which indicate that the political awakening of Russia’s urban middle class will continue. Russia has already crossed the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita line of US$10,000. After achieving this level of prosperity, a population is generally expected to begin actively demanding democratization, as a recent study of over 100 countries by Russia’s Renaissance Capital investment bank demonstrates. Over 80 per cent of Russian respondents to opinion polls place themselves somewhere in the middle classes, according to a recent Citibank report, also noting that urban Russians (who account for 74 per cent of the population and are increasingly wealthy) demand better governance. In addition to the growing wealth of Russia’s urban population, demand for democratization in Russia is also facilitated by such factors as high levels of tertiary education and soaring rates of Internet penetration that have made Russians the largest Internet audience in Europe.

Putin has been apprehensive of the middle class’ demands for better governance — but so far has offered only token measures of liberalization that fall short of protesters’ demands for a re-run of the December 2011 parliamentary elections and for a thorough liberalization of the so-called ‘managed democracy’ model that Putin has been building on since 2000. Given that Putin’s key supporters in the business and bureaucratic elites benefit from the status quo, deep reform is not to be expected. That is unless the main groups behind the ongoing protests unify around organize a clear-cut common agenda that not only sustains but also considerably increases pressure on the Kremlin for a protracted period. So far, the initial attempts to unify and strengthen protests through the inclusion of angered political groups from both sides of the political spectrum have not been successful.

But even if the protests continue on the scale seen over the past three months, an Arab Spring-like violent regime change in Russia still remains unlikely. Such a change can succeed only if it is staged in Moscow. While Putin’s popularity has indeed dwindled in the Russian capital, Moscow is unlike Tripoli or Tunis. It has an abundance of economic opportunities and unemployment is considerably below the Russian national average. Other social factors observed during the Arab Spring such as a ‘youth bulge’ and relative poverty hardly apply in Moscow. The average age of Moscow residents is around 40 – among the oldest in the Russian regions –and the average Moscow family owns property worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And while representatives of the growing middle class are increasingly demanding political liberalization, better governance and an end to corruption, they want these changes to occur in a peaceful manner.

Putin may have to pursue deep reforms

Apart from growing public pressure, it may be the deep and protracted economic crisis which will drive Putin to pursue structural reforms, in the economic and socio-political spheres. Factors that may trigger such a crisis include the Russian economy’s dependence on energy exports (oil accounts for half of Russia’s revenues) and the dominance of inefficient state-controlled giants; rising public expenditures (which jumped ten-fold in 11 years to exceed 20 per cent of GDP in 2012) and international ratings agency Fitch’s readiness to lower Russia’s rating because of the further massive budget expenditures promised by Putin during his campaign. Adding to this are a creeping pension fund deficit (already running at US$40 billion a year), social inequality, and severe regional disparities. Depopulation and labor shortages will not ease Putin’s way either, with Russia forecast to lose 10 million workers by 2025.

If a deep crisis erupts, Putin’s ability to implement profound changes will depend on how rigid his social contract with the poorer sections of society will be — and on how entrenched the bureaucratic and business elites have become.

The post Putin Redux appeared first on Geopolitical Monitor.

Summary

August 5th marked former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko’s third arrest since June. Mrs. Timoshenko has been charged for allegedly signing an illegal gas deal with Russia in 2009 when she was in office.  A host of western nations and the EU have condemned her arrest, citing power politics rather than legal grounds as cause for the indictment. Allegations by these groups against Ukraine also threaten its status within the EU and its integration into any western security alliance, especially NATO.

Analysis

Hundreds of opponents and supporters of Ukraine’s ex-Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko congregated around the state courthouse in Kiev as the Timoshenko trial goes into its seventh week.  On the 20th of December 2010, Ukrainian state prosecution charged ex-Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko with abuse of office. Timoshenko has been indicted on the basis of having ended a gas deal with Moscow in early 2009, causing an interruption of Russian gas supplies, leading to crisis conditions in various parts of the EU. The prosecutor’s technical argument has been that Mrs. Timoshenko exceeded her authority in pushing the gas deal through without consulting her government, thereby committing a fundamental procedural error. However, critics have pointed to flaws in the indictment, stating that charges on abuse of office in committing to a gas deal with Russia are unfounded.

Most recently, Ms. Timoshenko has requested the European Court of Human Rights to decide if the charges are politically motivated, as presently Ukraine holds the position of chairman-in-office of the Council of Europe. Both the European Union (EU) and the United States have expressed concerns about the political motivation behind these charges.  In fact the leader of the Christian Democrat faction of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly recently declared that the “politically motivated prosecution of the opposition, particularly Timoshenko, is not consistent with European standards.” Due to these concerns, on June 9th, 2011, the European Parliament adopted a resolution for Yulia Timoshenko’s case, and other significant former Ukrainian government officials expressing concern about “the increased selective prosecution of figures from the political opposition in Ukraine.”

Regional and International Implications

The ramifications of this case may increase on an international and European level over the next six months as the trial mirrors an important EU-Ukraine political agenda. The EU plans to host a prestigious Eastern Partnership Summit at the end of September, in which Ukraine is likely to be the most important partner state due to its political significance and size. Additionally, Ukraine and the EU want to establish a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Association Agreement (DCFTA) and have set December as the targeted time frame to ratify this document. However, it is important to note, that in order for the EU to ratify any such treaty, it must be agreed upon by all 27 national parliaments as well as the European Parliament.

It is likely that this case will continue to evolve in the Ukrainian justice sector with possible involvement of the European Court of Human Rights. With the involvement of the EU, the government and judiciary in Kiev will likely find themselves under increasing pressure to ensure that legal proceedings are both politically just and legally correct. If equitably managed, there is time for Ukraine to resolve the matter before its various meetings with the EU between September and December. This    is an especially pertinent issue for Ukraine as there has recently been heated debate within Europe of the state’s democratic retreat. Since adopting a ‘non-bloc’ status in 2010, the country’s evolving international collaboration in the security sector has been largely ignored by European Union policy-makers. At present, political experts claim that analysis of the current stage of the EU-Ukraine security relationship has led to a startling conclusion; while the EU is concerned about the close Ukrainian-Russian dynamic, the EU has been seeking increased collaboration with Russia on security issues, threatening Ukraine’s role in the emerging European security complex. Additionally, Ukraine’s ‘non-bloc status’ also prevents its integration into any international security alliance, especially NATO, on a legislative level.

In fact, much of the Ukraine’s political future hangs upon this case, and more significantly, the Yanukovych administration’s international reputation. Most notably, the European Parliament will be following the case closely, and its resolution will largely determine whether the EU will or will not ratify the proposed Association Agreement (DCFTA). Theoretically, the European Parliament is legally entitled to stop the Agreement from entering into force at any time and under any circumstances, if criticisms of the Timoshenko case increase in credibility and volume. Thus, it is in Ukraine’s best interest to ensure that the controversy does not escalate to the point at which this becomes a prospect.

Kavita Bapat is a contributor to Geopoliticalmonitor.com

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