Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky sent a letter to Verkhovna Rada speaker Dmytro Razumkov calling for an emergency parliament meeting on March 4, the president’s office reported on Feb. 28.
The announcement comes amid rumors that Zelensky seeks to replace Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, as well as some members of the Cabinet of Ministers. In Ukraine, the prime minister is appointed by the president with the consent of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament. To dismiss a prime minister, the Rada also must vote.
But Honcharuk, who has been prime minister since late August, has immunity from being fired for 12 months since he started on the job. The Rada can let him go only if he resigns.
Several Ukrainian media reported on Feb. 28, citing anonymous sources in the government and presidential administration, that Honcharuk filed his resignation and the parliament is expected to vote on it during the March 4 emergency meeting.
Zelensky has made it clear that he wasn’t satisfied with the performance of the government under Honcharuk. The prime minister, in turn, complained recently about the media attacks on the government.
The Kyiv Post reported on Feb. 25 that Zelensky was considering veteran politician Serhiy Tigipko as prime minister. Several government sources who weren’t authorized to speak publicly told the Kyiv Post that Tigipko was in negotiations with Zelensky’s office.
Zelensky said that he met with Tigipko, saying he was one of many people he has been interviewing for government posts. However, on Feb. 28, chairman of the Servant the People parliamentary faction David Arakhamia said Tigipko will not get the job. Making Tigipko prime minister would be complicated: for that, the Rada would have to cancel the law on lustration, which bans officials who held top jobs under the ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych to work in the government for 10 years.
Appointing Tigipko would also be a sharp turn of direction for Zelensky, who came to power in 2019 on a promise of getting rid of the old political elites.
Iuliia Mendel, the spokeswoman for the President’s Office, did not respond to a request for comment. The Kyiv Post also reached out to the press service of Honcharuk for comment but has not received a response.
Honcharuk in trouble
Honcharuk, a young reformer and a newcomer to the government, has been having a tough time recently: Zelensky publicly said he wasn’t satisfied with his performance, apparently blaming him for the stagnating economy; he was targeted in an audio leak; finally, he has been unpopular with the people.
Recent polls published on Feb. 24 show that the distrust rating of the government exceeded 50% for the first time in Zelensky’s mandate.
But his resignation, if it happens, may be linked to internal tensions.
Ukrainian media reported that on Feb. 28, Honcharuk and Zelensky allegedly quarreled over the replacement of the management of Centrenergo and three regional power companies. Although the media cited anonymous sources in their reports, there are signs that the state-owned energy company indeed became part of the discord.
On Feb. 26, Honcharuk announced that the Cabinet decided to replace the head of Centrenergo and three other energy companies to tackle corruption and accelerate privatization. However, the Cabinet never published an order to replace the management of Centrenergo on its website and, as of three days later, the old management was still in place.
This could be linked to the influence of billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. Until several months ago, Kolomoisky’s ferroalloy plant was the main customer of Centrenergo, a state company, which sold electricity to the oligarch’s enterprise cheaply. This fueled accusations that the oligarch was influencing the management of the state company.
Ukrainian media reported that Zelensky confronted Honcharuk over his decision to replace the company’s management, and effectively stopped it. Legally, the president doesn’t oversee the prime minister.
Honcharuk’s spokeswoman Tetiana Kovryga on Feb. 28 refused to say whether the management of Centrenergo was fired at all.
The expected replacement of the Cabinet arrives shortly after another major shift: replacement of Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Bohdan with a longtime ally, Andriy Yermak. Bohdan took an active part in selecting the Cabinet in August 2019.
Why an emergency meeting?
Even though the Rada is scheduled to be in session on March 3 – March 6 anyway, Zelensky needed to call an emergency meeting on March 4 because the work of the parliament has been effectively blocked for weeks by an enormous bill that seeks to introduce a farmland market for the first time in independent Ukraine history.
Once the lawmakers started discussing the bill, they are required to reach a decision. With the land market bill having 4,000 proposed amendments, the process could take weeks. But an emergency meeting of the parliament can have a separate agenda, a possible way to bypass the bottleneck created by the land market legislation.
