The controversies of Ukrainian lustration

Abstract

The political analysis of lustration in Ukraine as an institutional practice of public administration has been made in the article.

Lustration is defined as personnel policy, which involves the exclusion of certain categories of persons from the system of public administration for a certain time. According to the model, the lustration in Ukraine is a «severe» administrative ban (10-year suspensions) and a «judicial ban» (5-year suspensions). The uniqueness of Ukrainian lustration is in the possibility of including in the system of public administration persons who are subject to the lustration requirements, subject to receiving them the status of participants in the Antiterrorist operation.

The Ukrainian lustration is a «late», by time, so-called «lustration of the second wave».

The expanded object of lustration is applicable to three categories of persons:

1) those who were involved in the usurpation of power in the time of V. Yanukovych;

2) persons who worked in the Communist Party leadership positions in the Komsomol were secret servants of special services; 3) workers who could not prove the legal, noncorrupt nature of their property acquired while they stay at the governmental posts.

The advanced lustration facility in Ukraine (the inclusion of the first category

1) of the people who held positions under the presidency of V. Yanukovich and the third) corrupted corresponds to the practice of late lustration in the CEE countries, in particular, such restrictions were in force in Bulgaria, Romania, for «Successful capitalists «or» «Lending millionaires».

In 2014–2017 was the third attempt to introduce lustration in Ukraine, as it was noted in the article. The initiative belonged to the public, and it arose even during the events of the Revolution of Dignity.

The beginning of the institutionalization process (adoption of the Law «On the Purge of Power», the creation of the lustrous register) was the result of the joint activities of public and state leaders.

Summing up, it has been proved that the lustration in Ukraine is a political process, the necessity of which is determined by the need for the self-defense of a democratic state in the process of transformational change. Ukrainian lustration practice causes a lot of social discussions, conflicts of interest in political elites, but, in general, it promotes the consolidation of democracy in the country.