Yemets, Oleksandr

Yemets, Oleksandr [Ємець, Олександр; Jemec’], b 1 January 1959 in Velyka Medvedivka, Khmelnytskyi oblast, d 28 January 2001 near Marinske, Dnipropetrovsk oblast. Law enforcement officer and politician; from February 1996 to May 1999 a member of the directing bodies and secretary of the pro-presidential People’s Democratic party (NDP), as well as head of the Kyiv branch of the NDP organization; from May 1999, a leader of the Reforms and Order party (RPR); presidential adviser on legal-political matters and secretary to President Leonid Kuchma’s Political Council (from February 1997). He graduated in 1981 from Kyiv University where he studied psychology, and followed this with training at the higher school of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs which he completed in 1989, specializing in law enforcement. After completing university, he worked with young offenders. During 1992, he headed the collegium on legal policy of the State Duma, a short-lived policy body advisory to the President, and was a state counselor. Until May 1992, he was co-leader of the Party for the Democratic Rebirth of Ukraine (PDVU); at this time he was also leader of the party’s parliamentary caucus. From November 1992 to April 1993, he served as adviser to President Leonid Kravchuk on political and legal problems, and was head of the corresponding presidential commission. Thereafter he served until 1 July 1994 as minister for nationalities and immigration. In 1996, from 26 March to 14 August, he was vice-prime minister responsible for political and legal matters. He was also head of the Commission on Human Rights, a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Ukraine, and (from November 1994 to July 1996) one of President Leonid Kuchma’s representatives to the Constitutional Commission.

In March 1990, he was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR from a Kyiv constituency, and was a member of the parliamentary commission on human rights. He left the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in July 1990. In July 1994, he was re-elected to the Supreme Council of Ukraine as a member of the PDVU, this time from a constituency in Lviv oblast. He joined the Reforms and Order caucus and retained his membership of the commission on human rights. In the 1998 parliamentary elections his name was sixth on the list of the People’s Democratic party (NDP) of the PR ballot and he was one of 17 candidates thus elected. In parliament he became a member of the committee on construction, transportation, and communications, and initially joined the NDP caucus (he was that fraction’s first deputy leader from May 1998 to June 1999), but then switched to the Reforms-Congress fraction on 15 May 1999. He was fatally injured in a car crash on the Kirovohrad-Zaporizhia highway.

Bohdan Harasymiw

[This article was written in 2020.]