Lawyers: Appealing to Phanar, Petro Poroshenko acted as a private person

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko

On November 13, 2018, the Kiev District Administrative Court was to consider the claim of the NGO “Rule of Law” to the President of Ukraine on establishing the lack of jurisdiction of Petro Poroshenko to interfere in the Church affairs. The meeting was postponed due to illness of the judge.

This is reported on the Facebook page of the NGO “Rule of Law”.

Lawyers recalled that in public statements the Presidential Administration insisted that the President, in his Appeal to Patriarch Bartholomew, acted solely in the interests of national security.

Poroshenko’s representative responded to the lawsuit with an official statement of defence, in which he demanded to stop legal proceedings. The defence says that the President did not perform any administrative functions while signing and appealing to the Ecumenical Patriarch. “That is why, following the logic of the representative of the head of state, the proceedings should be closed,” the lawyers say.

The NGO “The Rule of Law” explains that, translated from a legal language, this means that Poroshenko, signing an appeal to Patriarch Bartholomew, acted as a private person. Therefore, according to the rules of administrative court proceedings, one cannot sue him as a subject of authority.

Although the very Appeal to the Ecumenical Patriarch expressly states that the President of Ukraine refers to him as the head of state.

“The other arguments of the President’s representative are exclusively formal and procedural in nature and are needed only to dodge the matter in essence,” lawyers say.

We recall that on October 1, the Kiev District Administrative Court accepted the claim of the NGO “Rule of Law” regarding the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian authorities to interfere in the activities of the Church. Also, claims on the lack of jurisdiction of the Verkhovna Rada to appeal to Patriarch Bartholomew in the Supreme Court of Ukraine were filed by UOC communities.

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