Goodbye <I>Propyska </I>
At its open plenary session on November 20 the Constitutional Court of Ukraine made public its verdict annulling the propyska, mandatory registration of Ukrainians with the police, with the latter having the right to deny such registration. The CC verdict comes in the wake of an appeal by forty- eight lawmakers who urged the CC to assess compliance with the Constitution of some provisions of the Regulations on the Passport Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to the lawmakers, the present authority of the Passport Service violates Articles 24, 33, and 64 of the Constitution. These articles stipulate that there can be no restrictions or privileges related to one’s place of residence. They guarantee those residing legally in Ukraine the freedom of movement and choice of their place of residence. The CC verdict obliges the government to bring all ministerial regulations on mandatory registration in compliance with the Constitution, requesting Verkhovna Rada accelerate the passing of a corresponding law. The CC decision, however, has received mixed comments from the experts, with arguments voiced both in favor and against canceling the almighty propyska. Oleksandr Lavrynovych, State Secretary for the Justice Ministry and author of the bill On the State Register, is of the opinion that the cancellation of propyska indicates that “we have built a democratic country in which the basic rights of citizens are protected and any infringement on these rights must be annulled.” Simultaneously, political scientist Volodymyr Malynkovych believes that Ukraine lacks the conditions for scrapping the propyska. One of them is the large discrepancy in the standards of living among Ukraine’s regions, with poor Donbas residents craving to move to a comparatively wealthier Kyiv. “In the West they do not have such a high degree of population migration which makes it possible to not resort to such a democratic procedure as registration,” Mr. Malynkovych argues. In his view, the introduction of registration will provoke various administrative measures adding to the corruption and bribery of officials.
According to the experts, a way out might be to introduce an intermediate system of registration, less rigid but still effective. One of them, Yury Sayenko, head of the department of social expertise at the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences Institute of Sociology, believes the same propyska, only without the totalitarian connotations it has acquired, could provide an alternative solution.
True, it remains to be seen whether the cancellation of propyska will tighten or loosen the screws on Ukrainians as Verkhovna Rada will have the final say. So far, it has only the one bill on registration submitted by Oleksandr Lavrynovych to consider. The bill proposes canceling the propyska and simultaneously filing information on one’s marital status, children, parents, military registration, police and court records, trips abroad, insurance obligations, documents issued, and, most interestingly, fingerprints of one’s right hand. Thus, it is anyone’s guess what the cancellation of propyska will mean for Ukrainians: democratization or even stronger control under some other name.
