Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation
Focus on Ukraine
October 13 – 19, 2014
Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation
TABLE OF CONTENTS
І. Overviews of political
events of the week…………………………..…….….……………….3
II. Analytical Reference….………….…..…...……….……...…….4
START OF LUSTRATION IN UKRAINE:
PUSHING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE?.............................….....4
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І. Overviews of political events of the week
Nearly 500 conscripts of the National Guard of Ukraine left their
base in Nova Petrivka and picketed in front of the Presidential
Administration in Kyiv demanding their demobilization. The military
servicemen assure that they served out their time for a year and a half
and have the right to leave their conscripted service. Commander of the National
Guard Stepan Poltorak, whom President Petro Poroshenko proposes to confirm as
the Minister of Defense, says the demands of picketers are illegal.
October
13
The session of the court in the case of Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko has once
again been postponed for an undefined period of time.
People’s deputies approved the anti-corruption laws submitted by
the government in the second reading.
230 members of parliament supported the corresponding decision at
the session of the Verkhovna Rada, thus allowing the creation of the
National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), which will engage in prevention
and investigation of corruption abuse by high-ranking government officials. NABU
officers will be granted extensive powers. In particular, they will take over
responsibility for cases of corruption from other law enforcement bodies. The
bureau will begin its work in the middle of next year.
October
14
The Verkhovna Rada adopted the draft resolution on the appointment of Stepan
Poltorak as Minister of Defense.
Militants opened fire on the village of Sartan near Mariupol. As a result, seven
innocent residents of the township and 15 people sustained injuries.
Military servicemen of the National Guard that came out in protest at the
Presidential Administration of Ukraine “became victims of puppeteers of foreign
services, stated adviser to the head of the State Security Service (SBU) Markian
Lubkivkskiy. He said the SBU has compelling evidence that the acts in which the
military officers of the National Guard of Ukraine were provoked by Russian special
services, in particular the 18th center of the Federal Security Services (FSB), which is
planning and trying to organize an informational attack against Ukraine. Lubkivskiy
stressed that acts of protest were also planned to be held in Kharkiv, Kherson,
Mykolayiv, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa and other cities in Ukraine.
October
15
The law on purging (lustration) was published in the newspaper of
the Verkhovna Rada “Voice of Ukraine”. It takes effect on October
16.
October
16
The law on purging (lustration) has taken effect. The Cabinet of
Ministers approved the decision to dismiss 30 high-ranking officials
under the new law. Review of officials pursuant to the new law will
begin on November 1.
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Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed the law on the special status of
certain regions of the Donbas oblast. According to the law, in “separate regions “ of
the Donbas oblast a special order of self-government has been introduced for three
years and it was announced that snap elections of deputies in separate regions of
the Donbas and Luhansk oblasts will be held on December 7, 2014. In addition to
that, the government assures that individuals that participated in the events in
these regions will face criminal prosecution and punishment.
President Petro Poroshenko named the main decisions that were
approved during talks with the presidents of Russia and France and
the German chancellor in Milan. The sides agreed to continue to
focus on making efforts to execution of all 12 provisions of the Minsk
Memorandum and also agreed that local elections in Ukraine should be held based
on the Law on Special Status of Separate Regions of Donbas. At the same time,
Poroshenko stated that in the bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir
Putin the two sides failed to achieve any practical results in resolving the gas issue.
October
17
II. Analytical Reference
START OF LUSTRATION IN UKRAINE: PUSHING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE?
On October 15, the official newspaper of the Verkhovna Rada “Voice of Ukraine”
published the law “On the Lustration of the Ruling Power”, which took effect the
next day. The key innovation of the law was the launching of the process of
lustration, specifically the test of civil servants and the ban against those
government officials that fall under the criteria stipulated by law for holding such
positions.
These criteria apply mainly to individuals that held high-ranking positions in the
government during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, participated in the
persecution of citizens during the events on the Maidan and the vagueness of
information in declarations of incomes, property and expenditures that were made
public. The first day after the law took effect, the Cabinet of Ministers dismissed 39
government officials that failed to pass the test stipulated by the law.
What will be the positive and negative consequences of lustration?
What role can this have in the general process of reforms?
Potential benefits and threats of lustration the Ukrainian way
The process of development, discussion
and adoption of the law “On Lustration
of the Ruling Power” was accompanied
by turbulent debates during which
proponents and opponents put forth
their arguments in favor of and against
its adoption. The analysis of the
provisions of the law and the political
situation in which it was adopted
proved that both sides were right.
On the one hand, the need to cleanse
the higher echelons of the state
apparatus of non-professionals, corrupt
officials, proponents of authoritarian
methods of administration and
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clandestine agents of a foreign state to
this day remain on the daily agenda.
It is also a true fact that many such
officials worked in the presidential staff
during the Yanukovych administration
and even agreed to promotions.
Accordingly, many of these highranking officials in the civil service are
subject to cleansing.
In addition to that, the fact that such a
radical law that may affect thousands
of civil servants is testimony to the
power of civil society and its demand
for revamping the state bodies of
power. The significance of the effect of
the laws in this context is that highranking officials will no longer have the
right of impunity or unaccountability to
citizens. Moreover, if the process of
purging is successful this could give a
positive stimulus to the people to
continue to put pressure on the
government.
At the same time, the scheme of
purging envisaged in the law raises a
number of reservations regarding its
effectiveness in terms of achieving the
set goals of cleansing the powers that
be. First of all, one of the issues is the
introduction of the mechanism of
automatic dismissal of all high-ranking
officials during the tenure of President
Viktor Yanukovych that held there post
for a year or more.
First of all, it is glaringly obvious that
the fact of holding a high-ranking
position in the civil service during the
term in office of an authoritative
president in a constitutional state
cannot be grounds for dismissal as this
is not necessarily testimony to
disrespect of the supremacy of the law
or the professionalism of civil servants.
Accordingly, it is difficult to justify
automatically relegated them to the
category of “detrimental” officials.
Secondly, the mechanism of review,
inspection and dismissal of officials
envisaged by the law is far from ideal:
either managers of state bodies in
which potential targets of lustration
work or individuals empowered to
dismiss the former work will be
engaged in this process. Given the high
degree of sensitivity of this process, the
launch of such a model will be
threatened by random cleansing of
subordinates by their managers and
engender new stimulus for acts of
corruption in order to evade such
inspections. Clearly, these flaws could
have been eliminated by creating a
separate independent body engaged in
lustration and would not be tied to
these objects, however such an
alternative was not reflected in the law.
Breach of consistency
Ultimately, yet another threat to the
implementation of the law on
lustration could be the creation of a
vacuum inside the civil service, which
will urgently be filled. Moreover, even
if the process of reviving the civil
service is successful taking it to its
logical finalization within a condensed
timeframe there will be no guarantees
that the new state officials will
qualitatively differ from those that did
not pass the lustration test. While this
threat is not directly associated with
the law on the cleansing of the powers
that be, it indicates a breach of
consistency in the revival of the state
apparatus:
before
cleansing
it
conditions must be created in order to
replenish it with professional and
honest personnel.
In other words, true renewal of the
apparatus of state officials would be
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logical not through lustration, rather
conducting of reform of the civil
service, in particular by adopting the
corresponding law. The recipes of
reform of the state apparatus are well
known and include doing away with
political influence on the process of
appointment
of
state
officials,
weakening the stimulus to committing
acts of corruption owing to pay raises,
etc. Moreover, the corresponding bill
was already drafted by Ukrainian nongovernment analytical centers, though
the need for its adoption has not yet
made it onto the daily agenda.
This appears to be rather odd taking
into account the popularity of the idea
of conducting cardinal reforms in
different spheres of social life. It is
quite clear that civil servants are the
key link in the chain of implementing
any reform initiatives and the result of
any reform depends directly on their
quality.
In the current situation, lustration of
the state apparatus could in the best
case scenario reduce the level of
resistance to conducting such reform
from within, though it will not
inherently improve the quality of the
reform process. This will depend first
and foremost on the introduction of
new rules of selection and functioning
of state officials – namely, those very
same reforms that the civil service that
to this day has failed to catch the
attention of Ukraine’s political milieu.
Conclusions
As such, the launch of the process of lustration pursuant to the new law “On Cleansing
the Ruling Authority” may have several advantages in the sense of removal of nonprofessional and corrupt officials under the time in office of ex-president Viktor
Yanukovych and overall strengthening of the capacity of civil society to have an
influence on the government.
On the other hand, the indiscriminate dismissal of all civil servants that held highranking position over the period 2010-2014 and the control over this process by the
immediate bosses of functionaries subject to review could turn into a random cleansing
of the state apparatus, the victims of which risk becoming fully professional
functionaries. Besides that, the conducting of lustration without preliminary reform of
the state service inherently poses a threat to the shuffling of staff without improvement
in its overall professional quality.
“Focus jn Ukraine” – weekly informational-analytical news bulletin prepared by the
Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (http://dif.org.ua).
DIF Analysts:
Iryna Bekeshkina
Oleksiy Sydorchuk
Maria Zolkina
Editor-in-chief: Iryna Filipchuk
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