ion to the upcoming elections in Ukraine. Though these truly will be the most important elections in Europe this year, the hubbub around the ongoing war on terror and the United States’ own upcoming presidential elections has ensured that Ukraine has not only been put on the back burner in Washington, but has all but fallen off the stove. I doubt George W. Bush has said a word about Ukraine this year, and neither has anyone else in his administration.
Suddenly, on Sept. 15, Dana Rohrabacher, a congressman from California, the one who as a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan put the term “evil empire” into circulation, introduced the Ukraine Democracy and Fair Elections Act of 2004 for passage into law. The preamble to the law details America’s desire to see free and fair elections in Ukraine, a wish that should be upheld by not only every Ukrainian, but every Pole, Hungarian and CIS citizen. Furthermore, it outlined serious consequences for Ukraine if this goal is not met, most notably sanctions of all sorts.
This type of bracingly tough talk is what I’ve been hoping and lobbying for over the past several years as substantial questions have been raised about the freedom of Ukrainian elections and the condition of the rule of law here.
But the bill goes even further, and into troubling territory. It gives the U.S. president the right to tell the Treasury Department “to identify and seize…personal assets or personal financial accounts in the United States obtained by improper or illicit means.”
Tough talk indeed.
The last paragraph of the bill then piles on, allowing the Secretary of State to seize the assets of “any other individual determined by the Secretary of State to be personally involved in the formulation or execution of policies or activities that are in contradiction of internationally recognized human rights and free, fair, and transparent elections standards.”
In short, the Ukraine Democracy and Fair Elections Act of 2004 proposes to promote democracy in Ukraine by giving the U.S. president the right to act as judge, jury and executioner on any Ukrainian individual fingered by the Secretary of State for crimes committed outside of the U.S. There is no appeal.
While the goals of this bill may be noble, and while I want to see free and fair elections in Ukraine as much as anyone, I doubt that limiting democracy and the rule of law in the United States is a proper way to promote democracy in Ukraine. The bill would deny to some Ukrainians their day in a U.S. court. They could lose their property without having a legal say about it. And also, how can the U.S. government convict and punish Ukrainians for crimes committed in Ukraine? Shouldn’t U.S. law work only on U.S. territory?
For years, this publication and I have vigorously lobbied for the rule of law in Ukraine and for the Ukrainian government to value the property rights of its citizens as the sacred natural rights that they are. The U.S. should value those rights, too. Everyone who is accused of wrongdoing in either the U.S. or Ukraine deserves his day in court and the protection of the law, even if he’s a shady member of Ukraine’s elite.
Jed Sunden is the Kyiv Post’s publisher.
