Given the relative proximity of March 31, when President Volodymyr Zelensky’s term will end, a question arises in the Ukrainian public debate: will the country replace the law and go to the ballot box, or is it inevitable to postpone the elections until the cessation of hostilities, as required by the current martial law?
The main political parties in the Ukrainian parliament are clear: an election in the middle of this war would constitute a logistical challenge for the state, which would also jeopardize the security of the electorate and destroy the unity that Ukraine needs. Russian invasion.
“Right now an air attack alert is being declared, which could last an hour, two hours or more and would possibly be reactivated shortly,” Yevgenia Kravchuk, representative of the majority Sluga Narodu party, told Efe in an interview. whose president Zelensky has emerged from among his ranks.
Air alerts warn of enemy missile or drone attacks and are issued for people to descend to shelters. On Election Day, they would disrupt the voting process.
The Sluga Narodu deputy, who has an absolute majority in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, highlights the importance of a political replacement through the polls for a country that has not allowed a president to remain in power since declaring its independence in 1991 , but who sees it go to the polls with all the obligatory promises at the right time.
Opposition MP Oleksi Goncharenko, of former President Petro Poroshenko’s liberal-conservative European Solidarity party, agrees. “I don’t see any way to organize elections,” says the politician to whom he belongs, after the illegality following the beginning of the invasion of the pro-Russian bloc of Parliament, the opposition party with the maximum number of seats.
“Elections are, by definition, an internal struggle, and that’s what they deserve to be, but it’s not a positive thing at a time of existential war for the country,” believes Goncharenko, who, like his political opponents, sees it as guaranteeing the right to vote to all displaced persons, refugees and infantrymen fighting on the front lines.
The Odessa deputy also warns that it is about guaranteeing the physical protection of voters. “There are spaces in Kharkiv, Kherson or Zaporizhzhia that are within the diversity of Russian artillery, so even aerial warnings would be useless,” he said.
Grigory Nemiria, a parliamentarian from former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s conservative Homeland party, points out the difficulties in guaranteeing the right to vote for the millions of refugees who have settled because of the war and for Ukrainians who live professionally in the 17% of the population. the country. the national territory conquered through Russia.
How can these citizens participate in the elections?” asks Nemiria, who also stresses the impossibility of respecting Western electoral criteria under martial law that limits, for reasons of national security, freedom of the press or the right to assembly.
“The unity of Ukrainians is one of our strong points for our long-term victory, and the elections arouse many feelings that can undermine that unity,” the deputy told Efe.
Inna Sovsun of the liberal-progressive Golos party wants to go to the polls only when citizens enjoy all the rights and freedoms that any law limits in wartime.
Sovsun warns of the negative consequences of the “political turbulence” typical of electoral campaigns in the current context of war and also highlights the security factor.
“There is no assurance that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin will not try to bomb at least one polling station and, moreover, I am sure that on election day there will be air raid alerts on the same day,” the MP said.
Parliament’s position against elections in wartime is supported by the majority of civil society. Last September, a hundred Ukrainian NGOs and civic associations, among the most active and influential in the country, signed a manifesto in favour of the postponement.
In his most forceful speech yet on the issue, President Zelensky said on Nov. 6 that “now is not the time for elections” and called for focusing on winning the war so as not to lead to a “political divide” that, he said, only Russia has advantages.