But has intervened to make sure the crack down would not target him

Petro Poroshenko helped found the Party of Regions in 2001 and served as the minister of trade and economic development for nine months under Yanukovich in 2012

This is an excerpt from an article that originally appeared at New Cold War.org

Poroshenko is an apt disciple of the “bloody dictator” Yanukovych. He has spent so many years in Ukrainian politics that he learned how to survive in its murky and dangerous waters. He switched allegiances when it suited his personal interests. In 1998, he was a member of the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine, loyal to President Leonid Kuchma.

In early 2001, Poroshenko was one of the key politicians who created the Party of Regions, the party of Viktor Yanukovych. In late 2001, he crossed the floor to join the opposition faction of Viktor Yushchenko’s ‘Our Ukraine’ bloc.

Poroshenko was among the wealthiest businessman who supported Yushchenko in his presidential campaign of 2004. He was rewarded after Yushchenko’s victory when he was appointed Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. What a disappointment that was for a politician who wanted to become prime minister! But that posting was promised and given to Yulia Tymoshenko.

As a result of the subsequent political dispute between Poroshenko and Tymoshenko, the Orange Revolution team of Yushchenko became bogged down in endless scandals and mutual accusations of corruption. Near the end of Yushchenko’s presidency, Poroshenko worked as his minister of foreign affairs, from October 2009 to March 2010.

Under Yanukovych’s presidency, Poroshenko switched camps again and was appointed the minister of trade and economic development, from March to December 2012. He defended his posting by claiming that he wanted to help bring Ukraine closer to the Euroepean Union and get Tymoshenko released from prison where she was languishing facing corruption charges.

Poroshenko was a minister under Yanukovych’s presidency for nine months. After becoming president himself, and responding to popular demands for a purging from the state apparatus of the “former people” of the Yanukovych “regime”, Poroshenko pushed for a “lustration” law. In early October 2014, he ratified the law “On the Government Cleansing” which had been adopted by the Rada on September 16.

According to this law, one of the groups to be subject to lustration review is government officials who occupied positions under the Yanukovych presidency (February 25, 2010 to February 22, 2014) for no less than one year cumulative.

In their Final Opinion on the Government Cleansing (Lustration Law of Ukraine), issued June 19, 2015, experts from the European Commission for Democracy Through Law (also known as the Venice Commission) puzzled in section 51 “why a minimum period of holding such posts is needed and why this minimum period has been set to one year”.

They suggested that some justification be provided for this requirement. No such justification is provided in the text of the law, and, most likely, Ukrainian deputies did not convey any additional explanation to the experts of the Venice commission. After all, deputies of the Verkhovna Rada are not obliged to disclose all of the motives, or are they?

I found an explanation for this requirement in an interview with Egor Sobolev. He is a Ukrainian investigative journalist, activist of Euromaidan and a founding member of the political party “Volia”. In February of 2014, he became the head of a social organization called the Lustration Committee. It was created by a decision of the All-Ukrainian Union “Maidan”, an informal association of Euromaidan activists.

In an interview to the Ukrainian web-portal Ukrmedia, Sobolev suggests that this time frame was established at the personal request of President Poroshenko between the first and the second reading of the lustration law. Poroshenko wanted a safeguard that he would not be subject to lustration, as any other state functionary was to be.

According to Sobolev, the time limit is “not that unjust” because it limits the number of people to be purged to those who really worked for Yanukovych for a long time and planned and built his regime.

But I wonder, how does one define a “long time”? How is it that nine months, the period which Poroshenko worked as a minister under Yanukovych, is “not a long time”, while one year, especially cumulatively, is a “long time”?

Right now, Poroshenko is free from this obligation as President of Ukraine. The office of the president is an elected one. According to the lustration law, people holding elective offices are not subject to verification, the reasoning behind this being that voters already “cleansed” the corrupted officials by not electing them.

However, after Poroshenko steps down from the president’s position, and if he decides to continue his political career, he will have to subject himself to the verification, since the law on lustration does not have any expiry date.