Zelensky announces poll to be held alongside local elections

A “national poll” of five questions will be conducted
alongside the local elections scheduled for Oct. 25, Ukrainian President
Zelensky announced in an Oct. 13 video. “I will ask you five important
questions about what we talk about on the street, in the kitchen, on the Internet,
and what we argue about with our friends, parents or taxi drivers. About what
we were never asked about earlier,” the president said, adding that a new
question will be revealed every subsequent day. On Oct. 14, Zelensky revealed
the first question to be, “Is it necessary to introduce life imprisonment for
corruption in especially large amounts?” As for details about the national
poll, the President’s Office clarified that it won’t have any direct legal
consequences and can’t be considered to be a referendum. The poll will be
voluntary and will involve casting ballots separately, said Serhiy Leshchenko,
a former MP and YouTube blogger. The project’s coordinator is Kyrylo
Tymoshenko, a deputy head of the President’s Office. Meanwhile, Parliamentary Speaker
Dmytro Razumkov said the poll would have to occur beyond election polls. Yet
the necessary funds to conduct the poll haven’t been foreseen, he said.

Critics said Zelensky lacks the constitutional
authority to conduct such a poll alongside elections. Moreover, “what Zelensky
is stating doesn’t conform to the election code and not even the
yet-to-be-approved law on the national referendum in its first draft,” said
Ihor Koliushko, the board chairman of the Center for Political-Legal Reforms.
“The degree of the threats to our state from such a step can be evaluated when
we learn of the five questions. But the act of public ‘stomping’ on the
Constitution of Ukraine and the call for fulfilling a political divide in
Ukrainian society has already occurred,” Koliushko wrote in an Oct. 13 blog. He
compared the poll to “an attempt at state overthrow” and similar attempts by
Viktor Medvedchuk – Putin’s confidante in Ukraine – in recent years to put
critical issues of national security and stability – such as federalization –
up for referendum. This technology is intended by the Russians to divide
society and undermine Ukrainian resistance to their aggression, Koliushko said.

The legislation on conducting a national referendum is
being prepared for the second reading and could be reviewed by parliament in
November, Razumkov told an Oct. 14 press briefing, as reported by the Ukrinform
news agency. “This presidential bill is designated as urgent. Once it’s ready,
we will review it,” he said. In his turn, Parliamentary First Deputy Head
Ruslan Stefanchuk said on television the prior day that Zelensky’s national
poll will serve as a probe for the referendum in determining what issues are
most important and what positions to take on them. Some of these issues could
be included in the referendum, he said.

Zenon Zawada: The random
announcement of a poll just ten days ahead of the local elections conforms with
Zelensky’s style of being a showman and entertaining the public. The People’s
Servant has been losing momentum going into the elections, as acknowledged by
its MPs, so Zelensky’s team has decided at the last moment to pull this strange
political stunt to boost turnout and support. As pointed out by his critics
however, these stunts cast doubt on the credibility of the government and its
legal foundations, including the constitution.

It’s apparent from Zelensky’s decision-making
throughout this year that Kremlin agents have infiltrated his inner circle and
are feeding him such proposals. This concern was expressed by Britain’s Secret
Intelligence Service during a meeting between one of its agents with Zelensky
during his visit to London last week. In our view, among these Kremlin agents
is Andriy Portnov, the advocate for the Yanukovych entourage currently active
in Ukraine. Other suspected agents, as raised by the NGO community,
are Oleh Tatarov, a deputy head of the President’s Office, and possibly Ruslan Demchenko, a foreign
policy adviser to the president.

Meanwhile, the man who is supposed to act as a
gatekeeper against such agents, Andriy Yermak, has shown himself to be an
opportunist who tells the pro-Western crowd what it wants to hear,
accommodating its demands when he needs something in return, but also willing
to entertain the demands of the Kremlin. And when it’s convenient, Yermak will
play Russia and the West off each other.

The notion that the Zelensky administration will
advocate life imprisonment for Ukraine’s most corrupt suspects is amusing,
considering that – as one example – Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova is
reported to be undermining Austrian attempts to extradite Oleh Bakhmatyuk for
criminal charges of misappropriating funds. So the relevant question is whether
this poll will be effective in generating votes for The People’s Servant party.
And we expect that result to be minimal. We also expect excuses will surface
following the elections for most of the five questions to not make their way
onto a real referendum.

Meanwhile, it’s still unclear how millions of these
forms will be printed, distributed and tallied without the direct involvement
of the Central Election Commission, which doesn’t have a mandate organizing for
such polls.