Cabinet appoints Olena Ivanovska as language ombudsman
The Cabinet of Ministers appointed Olena Ivanovska to the post of Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language.
As the representative of the Cabinet of Ministers in the Verkhovna Rada Taras Melnychuk reported on the Telegram channel, the corresponding decision was made at a government meeting on Wednesday.
Ivanovska is a professor at the Department of Folklore Studies at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and a Doctor of Philological Sciences.
She defended her PhD dissertation entitled "The Folkloristic Heritage of Hanna Barvynok" (1996), and her doctoral dissertation entitled "The Subject-Image System of Folklore: Categorical Aspect" (2007).
The position of language ombudsman was nominated by the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets. Other candidates included actor Oleksandr Zavalsky and Deputy State Secretary of the Cabinet of Ministers Pavlo Poliansky.
According to the law "On ensuring the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language," the Commissioner is appointed to the position and dismissed from the position by the Cabinet of Ministers. The Government appoints to this position one of the candidates nominated by the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications. The term of office is five years. A person may be re-appointed to the position of Commissioner, but may not hold the position for a third time. A citizen of Ukraine who has a higher education, speaks the state language and English, has experience in human rights activities or experience in protecting the state language and is capable of performing the relevant official duties due to his/her business and moral qualities, educational and professional levels may be recommended as a candidate for the position of Language Ombudsman.
As reported, on July 2, the Cabinet of Ministers dismissed Taras Kremin from the post of Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language effective July 8 due to the expiration of his term of office.
On July 8, 2020, the Cabinet of Ministers appointed Kremin to the position of language ombudsman for five years. Kremin was nominated as a candidate for the position of the Human Rights Commissioner. Other candidates for the position of language ombudsman at that time were Svitlana Bronnikova (candidate from the Ministry of Culture) and Sviatoslav Litynsky (candidate from the Ministry of Justice).
Before this, since November 2019, the position of the first language ombudsman was held by Tetiana Monakhova, but already in April 2020 she submitted an early resignation letter.