Collaborators can be prevented from standing in elections only after a relevant court verdict. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) must investigate the crime, pass the case to court, and the court must then issue decisions at all levels and deliver a verdict. First Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Korniyenko said this in an interview with LB live.
He said the SBU had previously completed similar investigations promptly. Korniyenko hopes that at least the high-profile part of the cases, where it is obvious that a person is a collaborator, will be concluded in time.
Overall, the issue of political lustration is not straightforward, the politician believes.
“It is clear that, in media and political terms, it is a very valid topic and it needs to be discussed. Why and how we ended up in this situation, how we became the victim of such an attack by Russia, how all of this was prepared by certain pro-Russian politicians. The groundwork was laid starting back under Yanukovych’s administration, when we even had Russian citizens in positions of power in the security agencies and the Ministry of Defence in particular. And it comes down to the question of the specific actions the state can take. What is being discussed, clearly, is lustration on the basis of banned parties. Our partners react very negatively to this. In particular, the Venice Commission has repeatedly written that there can be no mass lustration. There can be individual lustration,” he said.
Individual lustration is not a matter of legislation, but of verdicts. At the same time, Korniyenko finds it difficult to say how the political debate on this issue will end.
He added that if the current legislation remains in force, most representatives of pro-Russian political forces will be able to run again.
“If elections were suddenly held tomorrow, I currently do not see any bans preventing representatives of banned parties from running from other parties or through self-nomination,” the First Deputy Speaker said.
Korniyenko noted that they had discussed with legal experts the idea of marking representatives of pro-Russian forces on ballot papers. He suggests this could be a compromise, but he is not sure it would be enough for people.