President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy met with members of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, on May 4 to discuss his presidential inauguration.
Zelenskiy insisted on May 19 as a date for the ceremony and now hopes that deputies will vote for it on May 14, during their next session.
“Because we need to start working,” Zelenskiy said on Facebook, also publishing a petition to the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Andriy Parubiy, echoing the request. “Сertainty is extremely important for the people of Ukraine, for the foreign guests — who have already expressed a desire to come to the ceremony — and for me personally.”
The deputies promised to spread Zelenskiy’s appeal among their colleagues prior to the session on May 14, said Vice Speaker Iryna Gerashchenko, who was also present at this meeting.
According to media outlet Ukrainska Pravda, however, Parubiy does not support May 19, offering May 28 instead.
The law says that if Zelenskiy swears into office later than May 27, he won’t be able to dissolve parliament before the next parliamentary election in October 2019. This means that until that election, Zelenskiy won’t have representatives of his own Servant of the People political party in parliament. And thus, the new head of state might have little support while many presidential decisions need to be approved.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian law sets the deadline of June 2 as a final date for the inauguration.
President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy (2nd L) and his advisors talk with Ukrainian members of parliament on May 4, 2019. (Andriy Teteruk / Facebook)
Apart from the ceremony date, Zelenskiy talked with parliamentarians about establishing cooperation between branches of the government, according to Vice Speaker Gerashchenko.
They also discussed the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the possibility of a dissolution of parliament, and Zelenskiy’s impeachment policy. Gerashchenko hasn’t specified details of the conversation, however, saying only that it was “constructive” while Zelenskiy didn’t mention this at all in his Facebook post.
Zelenskiy, a former TV presenter and a showman, was elected as Ukraine’s next president on April 21, taking more than 73 percent of the vote in the second round of the presidential election. The official results were announced on April 30, and now Zelenskiy is getting ready to be sworn into office.
Yuriy Kostyuk, a member of Zelenskiy’s presidential campaign, said this inauguration ceremony at parliament might be unlike anything ever seen before in Ukraine.
