Government newspaper Uriadovy Kuryer published on May 23 a decree from newly-inaugurated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirming the dissolution of parliament and snap parliamentary elections for July 21, implementing an earlier decision from the president.
The election is to be held by an old and widely criticized electoral system, where half of parliament’s 450 lawmakers are elected by closed party lists and another half from single-member districts. In the past, candidates have often bribed voters or party leaders to get elected this way.
On May 22, parliament voted down changes to the electoral law that would have seen the next elections take place with only the party system, as Zelenskiy has proposed in a draft law. Lawmakers claimed that these changes would not be enough and the party system without open lists is equally as corrupt as the single constituency system.
Zelenskiy criticized them on Facebook later the same day, saying that deputies were the “old politicians who chose the old (electoral) system.”
“They expect for money and buckwheat (a food product widely used for bribing voters in single constituencies) get into Verkhovna Rada. I’m sure they are wrong,” Zelenskiy wrote, calling for the election of new politicians, and hinting at his newly formed party Servant of the People.
“Will we beat them together? July 21,” he wrote.
The Central Election Commission has already announced a special briefing on the snap elections.
The only remaining obstacle for them could be a decision of the Constitutional Court. On May 22, Andriy Parubiy, speaker of the parliament, claimed in the Verkhovna Rada that the dissolution of parliament was illegal and that lawmakers would challenge this decision in the country’s Constitutional Court.
