An Introduction to Transitional Justice by Olivera Simić

Author:Olivera Simić
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

7.6 Current position

The experience to date with lustration and vetting has provided a mixed record of the efficiency of these processes in delivering the benefits their supporters anticipated. Neither were the shortcomings used by their critics for undermining the legitimacy of these processes as significant as anticipated. With each new case of a democratic country that entertains the possibility of enacting such policies, it seems that public debates bring forth with equal strength the pluses and minuses of each policy, and that each new designed policy is only marginally better in terms of practicality and morality than its historical predecessors adopted in other settings. As post-conflict and post-dictatorial countries differ in terms of their historical evolution, the nature of the recent past, the level of repression whose legacy must be reckoned with, the type of regime change, and the post-revolutionary balance of power among political formations, it is likely that these debates will not be resolved soon.

While many countries chose to enact lustration and vetting, an equal, even larger, number of other countries retained old elites in the name of reconciliation, or effected elite change through other means. Therefore, analysts argue, lustration and vetting are not essential for the successful initiation and consolidation of democracy in post-dictatorial and post-conflict settings. After the apartheid regime was dismantled, for example, South Africa implemented only very limited vetting processes. The public service sector underwent rationalisation and demographic change, whereas charged political currents influenced the composition of political party leaderships. Only the judiciary and the state security faced significant institutional practices of personnel turnover. The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) was established to determine the composition of the courts. Within the security services, different services were first amalgamated, and vetting on grounds of loyalty to the state was later instituted.26 It is a matter of contention whether the social and political difficulties that currently plague South Africa could have been avoided through the implementation of wider vetting processes.

The most recent case where administrative justice measures were implemented is Ukraine. After gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine sought to strengthen its ties to the European Union in the hope of gaining acceptance as a member state. In 2014, however, President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign the agreement, at Russia’s urging. After his ousting from office in February 2014 in the so-called Euromaidan Revolution, the new Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk established a Committee on Lustration within his government. In October 2014 the Ukrainian Parliament adopted a Lustration Law that instituted ‘procedures for conducting checks of government officials and people nominated for government position with the purpose of deciding whether they meet certain criteria for occupying relevant post’.27 That month, the law resulted in the removal of 39 officials, 19 of whom voluntarily renounced their positions. Among those officials were heads of central executive agencies, first deputy ministers, deputy ministers, members of national commissions and one head of the regional state administration. The ban was for ten years. By April 2015, 2,000 officials of the Yanukovych regime were lustrated, of whom 1,500 quit voluntarily and 427 were dismissed.

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