Appeal of Vice Speaker Oksana Syroid about the proposed amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine. The Constitution is not the property of the state, it is the property of the people, it is a contract that we, Ukrainians, signed in order to create this state, to protect our freedom, our dignity and our rights.
Politicians who, on behalf of the Ukrainian people who elected them, adopt or change the Constitution, can do so only in two cases: if they want to make the state stronger, or if they want to improve protection of freedom, dignity and rights of people.
Politicians have no right to amend the Constitution if people don’t understand and don’t trust these proposed changes. You cannot amend the Constitution in the time of war, as the aggressor can use the process of changes and conquer Ukraine legally.
Russia started a war against Ukraine precisely to force us change our Constitution. Russia strives for a special regime of local self-government in the occupied territories to grant amnesty to insurgents and thus to conquer us from inside.
If we adopt these changes, we’ll admit that there is no Russian occupation in Ukraine – just the civil war. Russia has forced our international partners to agree with changes are beneficial for all parties except Ukrainians.
Unfortunately, the President used international pressure on us to strengthen his powers via amendments to the Constitution. In the text of the proposed changes on decentralization, unfortunately, no additional powers for the communities are provided. On the contrary – these proposed changes will make communities’ authorities more vulnerable and dependent on the President and on the perfect, not on people who elected them.
That’s too bad also that the amendments to the Constitution do not include the key point – dismissal of corrupt judges. This means that Ukrainians will continue to be judged by those who lost the trust of people and are not able to protect the human rights.
With all this in mind, we insist once again that these changes to the Constitution cannot be adopted because we are at war, because Ukrainians are not aware of these changes and do not trust them, because these changes will not stop the war in Ukraine, instead will make it internal, civil, because these changes will lead to authoritarianism, because these changes threaten our independence, our rights and our dignity, because such changes benefit everyone except Ukrainians.
Decentralization Week
Polish Experts Criticize Ukraine’s New Decentralization Law (graduate of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and of the Autonomus University of Madrid)
Hlib Vyshlinsky: It is Important to Understand What Features of the Decentralization are the Key for Emergence of New Political Leaders (Hlib Vyshlinsky, Executive Director, Centre for Economic Strategy)
Decentralization vs. Anti-Centralization (Oleh Zahnitko, Gide Loyrette Nouel)
Sergei Guriev: Decentralisation will Not Work As Long As Large Companies Remain in Government Ownership (Sergei Guriev, Professor of Economics, Sciences Po, Paris)
Struggle For The Constitution Is Going On (Appeal of Vice Speaker Oksana Syroid about the proposed amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine)
Viktoria Sumar: Terms Require Greater Concentration of Power in President’s Hands(Viktoria Sumar, MP of Verkhovna Rada (8th convocation), fraction of political party “People’s Front”)
Yuriy Hanushchak: Naively to Expect a Breakneck (Rapid) Disappearance of Local Oligarchs Due to the Efforts of Law-Enforcement Agencies (Yuriy Hanushchak, a Director of the Institute of Territorial Development and expert in issues of decentralization of power)
Georgy Egorov: the Central Government Should Have the Authority to Intervene with Force (Georgy Egorov, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, USA)
Opinion on the Draft Law Amending the Constitution of Ukraine Submitted by Oksana Syroyid (Oksana Syroyid, deputy speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, member of the constitutional commission)
Paul Gregory: Ukraine Must be Concerned by the Sabotage of Elections by Russian Money and by Russian Special Operations (Paul Cregory, Hoover Institution, Stanford and University of Houston)
Andrei Kirilenko: There is a 500-Year-Old History of Formal Self-Governance in Ukraine (Andrei Kirilenko, MIT Sloan)
Smart Decentralization: a Bottom-up Path Toward Functioning Institutions and Economic Prosperity (Mark Bernard, Assistant Professor of Economics, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany)
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