The Supreme Court on Nov. 17 voted in favor of challenging the lustration law at the Constitutional Court. The decision was supported by 27 out of the court’s 43 judges.
The lustration law, signed by President Petro Poroshenko on Oct. 9, aims to fire corrupt officials and those linked to former President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration as well as communists. Lustration has been one of the key demands of civil society, but critics have argued that the legislation contradicts the Constitution and international law.
The law has faced fierce resistance from judges and officials linked to the Yanukovych regime, while Poroshenko has also been accused of sabotaging it.
One of the Supreme Court’s objections against the law is that it could contradict the constitutional principle of judicial independence, said Yaroslav Romanyuk, chairman of the court. The law seeks to fire judges who made unlawful decisions during the EuroMaidan Revolution and those who were top functionaries of the Communist Party and employees and agents of the KGB, as well as to check all judges for corruption.
Dmytro Gnap, a journalist at Ukrainska Pravda, wrote on Facebook on Nov. 17 that Romanyuk was the informal leader of the movement against the lustration law.
“These are the most corrupt judges and those who tried EuroMaidan activists. We’ll have to remind them what a ‘trash coming out’ is,” he said, referring to the Trash Bucket Challenge, the recent practice of throwing corrupt and Yanukovych era officials into garbage cans.
Leonid Yemets, a lawmaker who co-sponsored the lustration law, also criticized the Supreme Court’s decision.
“They are further increasing the gap (between the people and the courts),” he said by phone. “The Ukrainian people don’t understand what principles they adhere to.”
If the Constitutional Court repeals the law, the parliament will have to pass another lustration law, he said, adding that it could be even stricter.
Yegor Sobolev, an author of the law and head of the non-governmental Lustration Committee, described the Supreme Court’s actions as “stupid and immoral,” adding that the system was “refusing to be purged.”
Popular anger with authorities’ sabotage of the lustration law could lead to officials and judges being “thrown out of windows,” he said by phone.
He said that, when people wanted to lynch officials and judges after Yanukovych’s overthrow in February, EuroMaidan leaders had stopped them because they wanted to change the system in a more civilized way.
“Now people are asking why they were stopped,” Sobolev said. “There will be either justice or lynching.”
The Supreme Specialized Court and the Foreign Intelligence Service have already challenged the law at the Constitutional Court, while the Party of Regions, which used to support Yanukovych, has announced plans to do that. The legitimacy of the law has also been questioned by Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema and Yevhen Zakharov, head of the Kharkiv Human Rights group.
Leonid Antonenko, a counsel at Ukraine’s Sayenko Kharenko law firm, told the Kyiv Post that the law was likely being challenged with President Petro Poroshenko’s approval because otherwise the Foreign Intelligence Service, which reports to the president, would not have objected to the law.
Some lawyers have argued that the principle of collective dismissals, stipulated by the law, contradicted Article 61 of the Ukrainian Constitution, according to which legal responsibility must be individual.
Lustration laws have also been ruled partially or fully unconstitutional by Hungarian, Polish, Albanian and Romanian courts.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
