'Lustration': A farce for the sake of plunder

Hundreds of activists of nationalist parties and movements surrounded the building of the Ukrainian Parliament on September 16, demanding the immediate adoption of the law on "lustration." And former high-ranking Communist Youth functionary-propagandist A.Turchinov (the speaker of the Pariament), who threatened not to release the deputies until the law was voted for. And the former Soviet Communist Youth functionaries Yulia Tymoshenko, Oleg Tyagnibok (far-right “Svoboda” party), and the former activist of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Irina Fahrion (“Svoboda” party), whose recommendation letter to the Communist Party of the USSR contained the information that she “helped the foreigners to successfully master the Russian language”, and many other prominent figures of the old times voted for the bill. 

The law was approved by 321 MPs - the vast majority of the Ukrainian legislators. The president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, who served as the minister of economy for the Cabinet of Nikolai Azarov (Yanukovich’s Prime-Minister), and indeed is one of the founders of the Yanukovich’s “Party of Regions’, strongly supported the bill. By the way, his son Alexei Poroshenko, who according the Kiev junta's loyal media secretly joined the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) and “fights there incognito under an assumed name”, also surely would have supported the bill.

The young prince, the heir to the presidents’ chocolate empire, in earlier years was a completely loyal to the former ruling “Party of Regions”, and then made a whirlwind career in the government service. In particular, young Alexei Poroshenko held senior positions in the Ukrainian Trade Mission at the Embassy in China - and, incidentally, his diplomatic talents “blossomed” during the reign of the bloody dictator Yanukovich.

On the one hand, the situation is extremely awkward - most of the current "lustration supporters" were personally somehow connected with Yanukovich and his milieu. Secretly, and often explicitly they cooperated with his administration. They flourished under his regime. They were the officials and the former members of the Communist Party, with ties to the KGB, etc. On the other hand, those who are around Poroshenko had promote a "lustration issue" to ensure that political opponents would not to cast the same card. With some bewilderment, A.Yatsenyuk (former PM) said that the "lustration" law could effect more than a million people - and now it turns out that the revoking of rights will be attributed only to "Yanukovych's inner circle." Apparently, repression against millions of people still lacks force.

In other words, the part of "Yanukovych's inner circle" which turned out to be more resourceful, bolder and meaner than their less flexible counterparts will not suffer from such laws. Like the apostle Peter, they had to renounce their "teacher" until the Maidan cock crowed three times. And this "lustration" is a symbol of the hypocrisy of the current regime as well as the new Kiev administration, which decided immediately to begin a "plunder" of city property, which neither Chernovetsky nor Omelchenko (former Kiev mayors) could not afford. Or let’s also take into account the outright service for the business interests of oligarch and governor Igor Kolomoiskiy – what is the main preoccupation of the "european democrat" Prime Minister A.Yatsenyuk.

The farce of the "lustration law" predictably became just a cover for the unprecedented plunder of ordinary Ukrainians.

Sergei Kirichuk

Liva

Translation: Gregg Butterfield