Zelenskiy will attempt to work with parliament, Danylyuk says

The president-elect and his team plan to work with
parliament by situational negotiations and agreements, Alex Danylyuk, among the
key advisers of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in an interview with the liga.net
news site published on May 11. The first priority will be appointing key
officials, he said, adding that attempts will be made to work with the
Verkhovna Rada before any decision to call early elections. The president could
turn to the public, “which has learned to pressure government” to approve
necessary legislation, he said, also leaving the door open for dismissing
parliament. “We need for important decisions to be reached,” he said. “Why
dismiss a working Rada?  But a non-working Rada – it will be simply
necessary.”

Zelenskiy’s team has drafted a program of “priorities
and the path to their fulfillment” for the first 100 days of his presidency,
Danylyuk said in the interview. “The team has enough people without experience
in implementing changes. They believe they can do a lot in a very short
period,” he said. The program will focus on fighting corruption, introducing
order in the judicial system, reforming the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU),
liquidating the tax police, relaunching anti-corruption bodies, relaunching the
selection and certification of judges, and creating a Financial Investigations
Service in removing financial investigative functions from the SBU and National
Police, he said.

Zenon Zawada: So far, the
program outlined by Danylyuk reflects the best (and only) strategy that
Zelenskiy has for success, which is a broad, pragmatic reforms campaign that
appeals to a wide spectrum of Ukrainians to improve the essential functions of
the state apparatus. Indeed a lot can be done in a short period of time, but
it’s already apparent that he will have a difficult time finding support in
parliament. If Zelenskiy demonstrates to the public a program to introduce
critical reforms (particularly improving rule of law, business conditions), and
if parliament refuses to cooperate with him (which is likely), he can use this
resistance to his advantage in the parliamentary elections.

On the other hand, the longer he waits for these
elections to roll around, the more time for his many enemies to accuse him of
failing to do anything in other key issues, such as the war in Donbas and high
natural gas prices, which are both dependent on the Kremlin. In particular,
pro-Russian forces led by Yuriy Boyko will be eager to poach on his core
electorate in southeastern Ukraine, many of which could get quickly
disappointed in Zelenskiy.