No elections in October

October 25 is an unlawful date to hold the presidential elections. This is the verdict of the Constitutional Court delivered last Tuesday. Now the ball is in the Verkovna Rada’s court, and it has two options: either to stick to the old decision and announce October 25 Election Day again, which is rather unlikely, or move it to another date.

In informal conversations the MPs were actively commenting on the decision by the men in gowns. For a while the issue even eclipsed the Lutsenko scandal. Andrii Shevchenko, a BYuT member, thinks that the Constitution was written in a way that prevents the MPs from finding any appropriate date.

“There is only one way out: to fix the date of the presidential elections on a particular date not connected with the term of a president’s office. The Day needs to be fixed. Whether it is the last Sunday in October or any date in the end of November, so that we would have a new president before the New Year, The Day ought to be determined by the calendar. The current Constitution contains so many contradictions that lawyers will always find different interpretations of the date.”

Three dates of the elections have been being discussed: October 25, December 27, and January 17. You are the author of the draft law that sets Election Day on December 27. Are you going to insist on this date?

“It is the approach I am going to insist on, not the date. It is necessary to achieve maximal consensus among the political forces. If the three major political players agree upon a particular date, so be it: put it to a vote and go make your choice. My approach is this: first, there has to be maximal consensus and, second, the sooner it happens, the better.”

In contrast to this, Mykhailo Chechetov of the Party of Regions is quite convinced that the Constitutional Court judges were driven by the instinct of political self-preservation. They have just made a decision to please both parties:

“First, they ruled in favor of Tymoshenko in response to Yuschenko’s appeal on the coalition’s legitimacy. They said that the coalition is legitimate. There are no grounds for the parliament to be dissolved. And then on the contrary, they passed a resolution in Yuschenko’s favor.”

Now parliament again has to set the date of the presidential elections. How can it be done if the Verkhovna Rada is blocked?

“The decision does not necessarily have to be made today or tomorrow. I think that we will have sorted things out by next Tuesday.”

Why Tuesday? Do you have any information that by then parliament will be unblocked?

Chechetov chose to show off his wit:

“We have found their weak point. Hennadii Moskal told us that their People’s Self-Defense MPs regularly get drunk as skunks. On Tuesday we left a huge bottle of vodka, and it disappeared by the next morning. Today we have left another bottle, and tomorrow we are going to leave a ten-liter one. By next Tuesday we will just have made them drunkards, and we will vote according to the country’s needs.

“Jokes aside, virtually every lawyer agrees that there is more politics than law in the date of October 25, while January 17 has more law than politics. However, everybody except those guys from Bankova Street wants the elections to happen as soon as possible. It is obvious that when the Lutsenko case is over, the issue will spark some serious discussions.”