Omelchenko: Kyiv deprived of Magdeburg Rights

The regulations of local government are crudely violated in Kyiv, the MP and chairman of the Verkhovna Rada committee on state building and local government, Oleksandr Omelchenko, has said. 

"Today Kyiv is practically deprived of the Magdeburg Law on local government. There is no capital in Europe, and probably in the world, where regional councils are effectively liquidated and the mayor exists neither legally nor physically," he said during the on-line conference on Monday.

"This is a divine scourge for Kyiv and its citizens. Even [elsewhere] in Ukraine there is no such situation, in hundreds of thousands of settlements and villages, thousands of cities and towns. This is a demonstration of the crude violation of the Constitution and laws on local government agencies," the MP added.

Talking about possible date of the elections of the Kyiv Mayor, Omelchenko said such elections according to Constitution and laws should have been held on May or July this year.

"All other dates, at the end of this year or at the beginning of the next year, even with the violation of the Constitution and law, are still very necessary and desirable," Omelchenko said.

At the same time, Omelchenko, an ex-mayor of Kyiv, refused to say whether he was going to run for this post at the next elections.

As reported, Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky on June 1 tendered his early resignation. On July 19, the city council's secretary, Halyna Hereha, sent to Verkhovna Rada a petition to hold early elections for Kyiv mayor.