Volodymyr Zelensky will not lose his legitimacy as President of Ukraine, Justice Minister Denys Maliuska guarantees: this Tuesday, his five-year term ends, and his powers will continue until the next head of state is elected.
“No, he will not lose his legitimacy… the president’s powers will last until the next one is elected,” Maliuska said in an interview with Ukrainian ‘BBC News’.
“But many of the constitutional provisions are designed so that those who want to complain about something or create some conspiracy theory can find it. So we should expect a lot of noise and clamour, especially since the framers of the constitution had little faith that a full-scale war involving Ukraine would become a reality, and therefore behaved very clumsily with regard to the relevant constitution. Arrangements”, says Maliuska.
Asked whether it would be appropriate to appeal to the Constitutional Court, the body that interprets the constitution, to set aside the question of the president’s legality, Maliuska said that, in his opinion, it was too late to do so, and it might even be possible. Harmful in the current situation.
“To be honest, this is definitely beyond my authority. I am not capable of appealing to the Constitutional Court. And, it may be too late to do so now, because such an appeal means that questions and doubts are well-founded, and we need the power of the Constitutional Court to resolve this situation.
Finally, the minister emphasized that all presidential decrees and documents will be fully operational from May 21. “Of course. No President works day to day as stipulated in the Constitution. The same applies to Parliament.
In peacetime, the mandate would have expired and elections would have been announced. But martial law, introduced with Russia’s invasion, means this won’t happen, and has broad public support. “For Ukrainians, the priority is to win the war and hold elections,” explains Anton Hrushetsky, head of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. “So they don’t question Zelensky’s legitimacy.”
Moscow, unsurprisingly, did just that. “We see these stories from Russia and how they are trying to impose on Western minds the idea that Ukraine is not a democracy,” Anton explains.