From his first days in office, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy showed his disregard for the rule of law by dissolving Parliament and ignoring the law of lustration while making appointments. However, events in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada on March 4 show a new level of the Parliament’s servitude to the president, having no will of its own, even when the law requires it.
First, the very fact that Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk’s government was dissolved is disturbing. Having made both reforms and mistakes during its six months of work, the government was definitely not one of the worst. Among its most positive sides was an attempt to reorganize some markets and state enterprises, continuing reforms introduced by the previous government. Although some reforms, like the land market reform, were disputable in their details, and general economic indicators tended rather to fluctuate than to rise, the government at least had no obvious links to oligarchs.