Poroshenko to sign #lustration bill, amendments possible
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/politics/poroshenko-to-sign-lustration-bill-amendments-possible-366890.html
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!”
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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.
On peut certainement faire confiance aux « activistes d’Euro-Maïdan » pour ne pas rester dans les limites du compromis négocié.
La loi est faite sur mesure pour exclure Porochenko lui-même du champ d’application,…
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.
