Political Rights and Freedoms of a Man and a Citizen in Ukraine: Concepts, Types and Characteristics

Abstract

The author elucidates the nature and content of political rights and freedoms in Ukraine in the terms of constitutional realities of today. It is emphasized that political rights and freedoms of citizens, alongside with their personal rights, were determined as the most important long ago, in the period of bourgeois-democratic revolutions in Europe and the wars of independence in America in the XVIII-XIX centuries. They determine the content of the constitutional and legal status of a person as a politically active citizen. Arbitrary abuse of civil and political rights by the authorities, including the right to participate in public affairs, has caused most of the revolutions, including the Revolution of dignity in Ukraine. The article presents detailed characterization of political rights assigned in the Constitution of Ukraine: the freedom of membership in political parties and public organizations (art. 36); the rights to participate in state management, in national and local referendums, to elect freely and be elected to the state and local government bodies (Part. 1, Art. 38); equal access to the state service and service in local government bodies (p. 2, Art. 38); for peaceful meetings (art. 39), the individual or collective petitions, or personal appeal to the state authorities, local authorities (Art. 40) and others.