Zelenskyy's 5 years: important decisions should not be delayed

Let's try to find out.

1. May 20, 2024, marks the end of the five-year term of incumbent President Zelenskyy. However, due to the martial law and the impossibility of holding elections, as well as the principle of continuity of power, the powers of the sixth president will continue to be legitimate.

Until when?

As a general rule, until the inauguration of the newly elected President.

Is the inauguration of the seventh president the only reason for Zelenskyy's termination of office? No, it is not. There are exceptions.

Let me remind you that there are four grounds for early termination of the powers of the President of Ukraine:

• resignation;
• health condition;
• impeachment;
• death.

2. It is important to remember that although Zelenskyy's powers will remain legitimate after May 20, 2024, it is from this date that the five-year representative mandate directly from the Ukrainian people expires and the sixth year of his term of office actually begins, due to the full-scale war and martial law.

What does this mean?

After May 20, 2024, Zelenskyy will find himself in a delicate situation where he will have to think not about his own rating (as he will inevitably lose the next election), but about consolidating the efforts of all healthy state-building forces in society through strengthening parliamentarism and abandoning authoritarian tendencies. It is high time that Bankova understood that small Russia (which they are persistently trying to immitate) will never defeat big Russia. Not to mention that the countries of the free world will not finance authoritarian fantasies in Ukraine.

It is time to stop fighting opposition opinion and time to return to Ukraine the television format that existed before February 24, 2022.

Formally a one-party government (as required by the Constitution), the government should be renewed during the war and actually consist of professional nominees from different political forces.

It's also time to stop taking over local self-government and trying to drive mayors into the executive vertical. This is not effective. Not to mention the unconstitutionality of such laws and decisions.

Important decisions should not be delayed, because the further inevitable loss of public support for the president, multiplied by the expiration of the current head of state's five-year representative mandate, could lead to obviously threatening challenges to the existence of our state as such.

So far, there is time for this. But time does not last forever.

Source

About the author. Andriy Mahera, lawyer, former deputy head of the Central Elections Comittee 

The editors do not always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.