The parliamentary faction of the Opposition Bloc has welcomed a ruling by the Ukrainian Constitutional Court (CC), which upheld the constitutionality of a bill on power decentralization changes to the country's Constitution.
“We welcome this decision as we would welcome any move conducive to peace in our country, which is why our faction voted in favour of the bill being sent to the Ukrainian CC,” the political party said in a statement released on Friday evening.
At the same time, the Opposition Bloc believes that the bill does not offer the decentralization the regions need.
“Moreover, the proposed ‘decentralization’ is in fact the strengthening of the presidential branch of authority,” the faction said.
The president will be allowed to discontinue mandates of mayors and local parliamentarians and vest presidentially-appointed special commissioners with full power of authority across the assigned territory. “Such ‘direct presidential rule’ will last until the CC makes a relevant decision which could last for as long they want it to, given that threatening, pressuring and blackmailing judges with criminal prosecution have become a norm in today’s Ukraine,” the statement reads.
And this is not the only new thing proposed in the bill, “which is far not only from power decentralization, but democratic principles as well,” the party faction said.
“We believe there is no alternative to deep decentralization. We have developed the constitutional changes which grant genuine rights to the regions. It is the decision that territorial ‘hromadas’ are expecting from the parliament today,” the faction said.
“We are convinced that the society is expecting the parliament to offer genuine decentralization rather than cut the rights of local representative authorities.’Decentralization’ in quotation marks must become one without them,” the statement reads.
