When Svyatoslav Pavlyuk's plane landed in Kyiv's Boryspil on Oct. 23, all he hoped for was a quick checkout and a taxi home. But a week on, he is waging a war against the border control agency, whose officer allegedly violated several laws and instructions in handling this passenger.
His case highlights the poor state of services provided by the government all levels, and a rampant disregard of law by public officials. Moreover, it underlines how ill-equipped government agencies are at handling complaints about officials misdemeanors.
Pavlyuk’s
ordeal started during the routine passport control. An officer called Andriy Tokmach addressed Pavlyuk in Russian,
despite the fact that any government employee is obliged by law to speak
Ukrainian while on duty.
When the
customer insisted on the officer speaking Ukrainian, he reportedly replied “I
don’t have to because I have dual citizenship.”
Ukrainian
law forbids dual citizenship, but violations are hard to uncover and punish.
Ukraine doesn’t punish or recognize dual citizenship, but demands that citizens
report about owning dual passports. Also, the law prohibits people with
citizenship of a foreign country to work in some state institutions, although
borders service is not listed as one of such institutions.
Appalled by
the response, Pavlyuk called the border service’s hotline to make a formal
complaint. Borders Service spokesman
Oleh Slobodian said an internal investigation was started against the officer.
His maximum punishment will be an official reprimand, though.
Pavlyuk says
he won’t mind the formal punishment, but under one condition: if the border
guard’s claim of dual citizenship turns out to be false. In that case, Pavlyuk
says, he “doesn’t have to lose his job.”
Pavlyuk is
an expert of EU Covenant of Mayors energy efficiency program in Kyiv. In his
job, he handles complex problems that require systemic solutions. When he
launched his campaign against the border guard, he hoped to achieve a similar
style of solution, but it’s proving to be a lot more difficult because others
are not seeing the need for it, proposing instead knee-jerk reactions.
One of those
came from Svoboda party, which on Oct. 25 filed a draft law that would oblige
public officials to know Ukrainian. Svoboda argues that state workers and
officials of all levels “endanger
national safety and sovereignty of Ukraine,” when they don’t speak
Ukrainian while performing their duties. “This law will strengthen the status
of Ukrainian language,” authors of the project, Svoboda member Iryna Farion and
Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn write in a covering note.
“This just
shows a lack of professionalism of the lawmakers, because knowing Ukrainian is
already a requirement included to all state job descriptions and codes,” he
said.
Pavlyuk also
said that his idea was to highlight the way the laws governing the functions
and behavior of public officials fail to work, as well as the poor state of
state governance in general.
“Those who
would rather ignore the lack of language and behavioral competence basically
agree… that the society has to accept that nothing works effectively,
including the border service, the customs service, the ministries and the
Cabinet. This is not just about the language,” he says.
