Ukrainians have registered more than 1,000 legislative proposals since President Petro Poroshenko's new electronic petition filing system started on Aug. 28.
So far he has been asked to restrict voting to 60 years of age or younger, return the country's nuclear weapon status and even change the colors of the national flag.
They have to collect 25,000 online signatures on special website in three months for the petition to be transformed
into a legislative proposal.
Thus far the most popular request is to let the citizenry
carry firearms, submitted by the Ukrainian Gun Owners Association. It has more
than 19,000 supporters.
“The fact that our petition has collected so many signatures
in five days shows that Ukrainians want it. They need guns for self-defense.
And we hope that they will get them,” Georgy Uchaykyn, head of the Ukrainian
Gun Owners Association, told the Kyiv Post.
Another top 10 petition is to bring popular fast-food
restaurant Burger King to Ukraine, supported by 4,715 people.
The petition’s author, Anatoliy Shariy, told the Kyiv Post
that he initiated the request to make fun at the president’s failure to get
social media giant Facebook to open an office in Ukraine.
“After a wave of (posts) by Ukrainians were banned in
Facebook, Poroshenko asked (Facebook founder) Mark Zuckerberg to open an office
in Ukraine. He thought that Ukrainians were banned because of unfair moderators
in Russia. Zuckerberg refused to fulfill his request because the Ukrainian
segment is moderated in Dublin,” Shariy said.
Most of the requests are rather strange and even hilarious.
For example after a petition to legalize marijuana was registered, another
appeared that wants to popularize the banning of marijuana use.
An initiative to ban the nationalist Svoboda Party has
collected 282 signatures, while a proposal to appoint Odesa Governor Mikheil Saakashvili as prime minister
garnered 233 backers. Twenty-eight signatories want ready-to-assemble furniture
retailer IKEA to open its doors in Ukraine, 14 want to build a Death Star to
secure victory in the war in Donbas and 55 wish to change the national anthem.
Kyiv Post
writer Veronika Melkozerova can be reached at [email protected]
