The Cabinet of Ministers of Viktor Yanukovych differs from previous Ukrainian governments in the scale of its projects. If previously the merging of state and private capital at the everyday level occurred almost imperceptibly for citizens, settling only in bank accounts and in the pockets of state officials, then the current initiative of the Cabinet looks large-scale.
The matter concerns the Cabinet of Ministers' draft law "On Documents Certifying Identity and Confirming Ukrainian Citizenship," submitted to the Verkhovna Rada.
According to the draft, it is proposed to introduce a new list of documents that will certify identity and Ukrainian citizenship.
It is now proposed to introduce a citizen of Ukraine's certificate, a certificate of belonging to Ukrainian citizenship, a passport of a citizen of Ukraine, a temporary certificate of a citizen of Ukraine, a diplomatic passport of Ukraine, a service passport of Ukraine, a seafarer's identity document; a crew member's certificate, an identity document for return to Ukraine.
The Ministry of Justice, which initiated such a draft law, believes that now the main document of a citizen of Ukraine should not be a passport, but a citizen of Ukraine's certificate.
The logic of the Ministry of Justice is astonishing: the entire passport system of the country must be changed only because the first meaning of the etymology of the word "passport" is "passage through a port." According to general European practice, however, a passport is a document for traveling abroad. The Ministry of Justice's initiative is a direct borrowing of foreign practice. For example, in Germany, a citizen's certificate is in effect, which is the main document.
However, in Ukraine, according to the draft law, it is proposed to enter into the citizen of Ukraine's certificate such information about the person as surname, name, patronymic; date and place of birth; sex; citizenship; marital status; place of residence (stay); special notes on the exercise of certain rights. It is telling that the document called "Certificate of a Citizen of Ukraine" includes a field for "citizenship." But the most astonishing thing in this document is the "validity period" field. Apparently, according to the government's plan, citizens will need to regularly renew their certificates so as not to lose citizenship, or else pay a fee in the form of a state duty. It remains a mystery for now whether a person loses Ukrainian citizenship upon expiration of the document.
Also mysterious is the document called "Certificate of Belonging to Ukrainian Citizenship." According to the Ministry of Justice's plan, such a document will be issued to persons under 16 years of age. However, it appears that such an initiative of the Cabinet conflicts with the current Constitution of Ukraine. After all, today in Ukraine the right of free choice of citizenship upon reaching the age established by law is in effect. The Cabinet, however, proposes to introduce "right of blood," according to which a child automatically receives the citizenship of its parents. But at the same time, the document, as stated in the draft law, is the main document certifying the identity of a person who has not reached 16 years of age, and therefore duplicates the Birth Certificate. According to Article 19 of the draft law, such a document will be issued to persons under 7 years of age for a period of up to 3 years, which will again require replacement of the Certificate upon expiration of its validity period.
On the whole, as we can see, there is no particular difference in the documents, apart from the replacement of the foreign passport with a passport and the passport with a citizen's certificate. Only the names of the documents have changed, although the general concept of the system of documents certifying identity has remained the same.
The only difference between the new identity documents and the current passport is that they will be printed in Ukrainian. The key change becomes the need to renew documents with a completely incomprehensible explanation of the consequences of not renewing them and the possibility of losing citizenship, which is unlawful as such.
Of course, the Ministry of Justice justifies such an initiative by the European standards toward which Ukraine is oriented. In reality, however, the underlying basis of the draft law may be more banal.
Today, about 48 million people live in Ukraine.
The cost price of the current passport of a citizen of Ukraine is about 1.5 dollars. If the government decides to make biometric passports, into which fingerprints and other data would be entered, the cost price would be about 12 euros. In total, by simple calculations we will get 52–72 million dollars or 576 million euros (if biometric passports are introduced). Agree, a quite decent sum for washing out of the State Budget into the accounts of enterprises that will carry out the printing of documents of the new sample.
It should also be taken into account that the production of documents is not a one-time matter, and therefore the state order will be permanent. In addition, foreign passports undergo a different registration system than the internal passports currently in effect in Ukraine, and therefore it cannot be ruled out that the replacement of foreign passports will also need to be added to the entire plan of the Ministry of Justice.
Of course, many remember how long the process of replacing Soviet-style passports dragged on. If we take into account that the Cabinet has decided, judging by everything, to carry out the replacement of all identity documents, then it is not hard to imagine the chaos that will prevail in the country during such an exchange.
But a piquant detail is that the document will enter into force on January 1, 2008. At the same time, the transitional provisions of the draft law stipulate that documents certifying identity and confirming Ukrainian citizenship issued before the law enters into force will be valid for the periods defined by the normative legal acts in accordance with which they were issued, or until they are declared invalid, but no later than January 1, 2015. Thus, the Cabinet of Ministers is preparing an excellent platform on which the 2009 presidential elections will take place under a new voting scheme with at least two documents. The confusion that will prevail during the change of documents will obviously make it possible to implement various schemes that may be used for voting by "dead souls."