President Petro Poroshenko on Oct. 3 said he would sign into law a bill introducing comprehensive lustration of former top officials of his predecessor Viktor Yanukovych’s regime and former Soviet functionaries.
But Poroshenko said that, before
signing the legislation, he would consider recommendations of the
Venice Commission, the Constitutional Court, the Council of Europe
and the European Court of Human Rights. He added that he did not rule
out amendments to the bill.
The bill, called the Law on the
Cleansing of Government, fulfills one of the key demands of the
EuroMaidan revolution, which ousted Yanukovych on Feb. 22. The
measure follows months of pressure by civil society, with EuroMaidan
activists holding regular rallies for lustration and even burning
tires near the Verkhovna Rada building to persuade it to pass the
bill.
“I have decided to
sign the bill,” Poroshenko said on Twitter. “Lustration will
happen! The state apparatus will be purged of KGB agents and top
Party of Regions apparatchiks!”
He also commented on the bill while
speaking at the Lviv National University on Oct. 3.
“It is imperfect
and problematic,” Poroshenko said. “A significant number of
people will have to comply and pass through sometimes humiliating
procedures. I’m not overjoyed and would like something better. But
in these circumstances lustration will happen, and the bill will be
signed.”
He said he was sure that the bill had
more positive features than negative ones.
Viktoriya Voitytska, who is running on
the list of the Volya party in the upcoming parliamentary election,
said by phone that the bill was a result of a compromise, and, if
supporters of lustration had not made some concessions, it would have
taken ages to adopt the bill. Volya, headed by major pro-lustration
activist Yegor Sobolev, has been vehemently pushing for lustration.
“Then the Trash
Bucket Challenge would have led to complete anarchy,” Voitytska
said, referring to EuroMaidan activists’ recent practice of
throwing officials linked to Yanukovych’s regime into trash
containers, sometimes referred to as the “street lustration.”
Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said in
September that the bill would apply to about 1 million people.
The Verkhovna Rada approved the bill in
the final reading on Sept. 16 but its text was only published on
Sept. 25, triggering speculation that some underhand dealings were
taking place.
The bill prohibits top officials who
worked under Yanukovych from being appointed to government positions
for five to 10 years.
The ban applies to those who held top
government jobs in 2010 to 2014 for at least a year and those
who held offices during the EuroMaidan revolution in November 2013 to
February 2014 and did not quit of their own accord.
These include ministers, heads of
government agencies, top judges, top prosecutors, members of the
General Staff, governors, top officials of regional administrations
and heads of some state companies.
The prohibition also applies to
functionaries of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party and Communist
Youth League, as well as employees or agents of the KGB, graduates of
KGB-run universities, agents of other countries’ intelligence
agencies and those who have called for infringing on Ukraine’s
territorial integrity.
However, former top officials of the
Yanukovych regime will still have a right to hold elected offices
like those of president and members of parliament. Nor will the law
affect rank-and-file employees of government agencies and the police.
That is why Poroshenko, who was head of
the central bank in 2007 to 2012 and economic development and trade
minister in 2012, is not subject to lustration.
Critics, including Prosecutor General
Vitaly Yarema, have claimed that the law violated the Ukrainian
constitution and international law. Others have argued that it would
be difficult to enforce the law, and that it could be used as a tool
in political vendetta rather than one of justice.
Voitytska dismissed the accusations,
saying that there had been enough time to make sure that the
legislation does not contradict other laws, and that 25 experts,
including European ones, had worked on the bill.
Another common claim is that it will be
hard to replace the large number of officials subject to lustration.
Responding to that argument, Voitytska
said she doubted the necessity of keeping a large government
apparatus. She added that wages should be increased to provide
incentives for potential government employees.
Kyiv Post staff
writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
